Roma director Tiago Pinto insists Jose Mourinho is the ‘clearly identified leader’ of the club and his future does not depend entirely on Champions League qualification, while it’s time to stop ‘blaming’ Nicolò Zaniolo.
The Serie A trip to Lecce kicks off at the Stadio Via del Mare at 17.00 GMT.
When the first question for Tiago Pinto by the DAZN interviewer was about Mourinho saying he could’ve left Roma in January, the response was one largely of irritation.
“I spoke for 35 minutes about the transfer market the other day, I came here eager to talk about the game, about Lecce and Pantaleo Corvino, who I consider to be one of the best sporting directors in the world, but instead the first question is one I answered the other day? I covered all of this.”
Tiago Pinto also denied failure to qualify for the Champions League would spark a total revolution at Roma over the summer, both within the squad and on the bench.
“I repeat, we do not need more pressure. We are a team with a very clearly identified leader in coach Mourinho, all the players and members of staff recognise that, we are all in the same boat to achieve our targets.
“The Champions League is an objective for many different clubs, we know what we want to do, but don’t say every day that the world will be perfect if we qualify for the Champions League or we’ll all walk out if we don’t qualify. That is not how football works.
“We just want to focus on getting the result against Lecce and then the next game after that.”
Zaniolo was finally sold to Galatasaray for approximately half the figure Roma were looking for, €15m plus bonuses and a percentage of the sell-on fee, going to Turkey because the transfer deadline had already shut in Europe with nobody willing to make the deal stick.
“I don’t want to spend all season talking about Nicolò or blaming him. What happened happened, it’s true that he blocked our transfer strategy, but we have to go forward. Gini is here, we cannot complain or seek excuses, we can only do our best and then see what happens at the end.”
The reference to Gini was Wijnaldum, who is on the bench for the first time since fracturing his leg in August 2022.