Luciano Spalletti insists he didn’t deserve to be whistled by Roma fans – “I behaved with consistency”.
It was announced this morning that the Coach is leaving the Giallorossi, and he was given a frosty reception on Sunday during Francesco Totti’s last match.
“It’s up to you to judge whether or not I made mistakes,” Spalletti shrugged in his farewell Press conference.
Luciano Spalletti insists he didn’t deserve to be whistled by Roma fans – “I behaved with consistency”.
It was announced this morning that the Coach is leaving the Giallorossi, and he was given a frosty reception on Sunday during Francesco Totti’s last match.
“It’s up to you to judge whether or not I made mistakes,” Spalletti shrugged in his farewell Press conference.
“I behaved with consistency, I said things in strong moments but if I said them it’s because I felt I needed something at that time for my relationship with the team and the club.
“Those are the fundamental moments, the moments which move things.
“You can’t go back, I heard the whistles on Sunday. I had felt them before, I heard them before Sunday.
“They’re not on my conscience, but on the conscience of those who wanted to create an inner war between myself and Totti which didn’t exist.
“I didn’t deserve those whistles for what I’ve done and how I worked.
“Then you continued with this story, which could create problems for Roma in the future and I didn’t want to give it to you.
“Now you have to do the opposite work, there’s a lesser Totti and you must match the quality of the man, the footballer who you’ve always seen.
“My hope for the future is to do things a little differently.
“This thing that was born on Sunday, that’s a bit crazy just like the game was – you saw the goals we conceded – is born of very important things, of Francesco’s goodbye, of this mass of people who were involved emotionally and who showed love for Roma.
“Any Roma player can become a champion and the potential is there. I hope that this is the line which compels all of us and, naturally, Roma to do better.
“We’re all together in the sense that I remain friends with Francesco and we’ll go to dinner, in terms of the happiness of a footballer things can be good or bad but the fact is I’ll continue to respect Francesco in every way.
“I was direct with him. I don’t know if he talks about some ventriloquism, but there’s mutual esteem with him.
“This situation that has been created disturbed me, I’ve probably done something wrong. In my opinion though, no, nothing wrong.
“But I saw on Sunday that so many people were whistling me and I didn’t like those whistles. Because I didn’t deserve them.
“If I met those people one-by-one, if they could enter into my head for the moment that we lost to Lyon, that we lost to our neighbours – there are two teams in Rome, and we lost crucial matches.
“If they’d been in my head for a minute in those matches we lost, they wouldn’t have whistled on Sunday.”
What does Spalletti mean when he says everyone isn’t together?
“I’ve spoken. I’ve talked about my conscience and others. I’ve done my job, and I think Francesco is a great footballer, he leaves a gap which will be very difficult to fill.
“I hope he’ll be given, as I think he will be, a director’s role, with the past he has and the history he has he can make the group united and close.
“When I defended the others, the message came out that I was against Totti.
“In a year and a half I didn’t succeed in bringing everyone together, and that’s a sign that I failed in the most important thing because Roma has the potential in terms of structure, environment and the strength of the city.
“The first thing I wanted to do is to get them all pushing for the same goal and I didn’t succeed. I’m sorry.
“When I arrived Roma were in trouble, there were no leaders and I had take decisions where Francesco was one of the ones I thanked the most: I penalised him by playing him less.
“But if he didn’t play much and Roma achieved a record points total, it means that objectives can also be achieved in other ways.
“In saying that, I don’t want to take anything away from the immense champion who Totti is.
"It's from outside that a champion drags his team forward, and this was a concept I didn't know before.
"I will alway say that I'll remain friends with Totti. We'll see how good he is now, because Monchi will show him, and we'll be closer and closer friends.
"He himself does not understand this exaltation that reduces everything to 'you or I' and takes away any chance of being 'us'.
"I hope he keeps going. I'm leaving, I hope Francesco continues. If everyone agrees, keep going. It wasn't me who made him stop."