Someone else that seems to get beat on and constantly berated is Franco Baldini.

For a long time, Franco has been a very valuable sounding board and confidante of mine and Franco has never done anything to the detriment of this club.

If you think Franco is involved in most of the club decisions then you are completely wrong. It’s clear that some people are trying to stir up a lot of trouble for a guy who quietly has always given me great advice and has helped us with some of the best players that we have on our team and some of our best sales over time.

From looking at the protests, it seems that people believe he was involved in the Daniele contract decision and that’s simply not true. Franco had no input at all on Daniele. I didn’t even talk to him about it because the discussions were with management over the last two years, as we looked at extensions and contracts.



We all have to make sure that - whether people like it or not - we make decisions that are for the betterment of the team. I don’t mean just for the people who are playing on the pitch but for the hundreds of employees that we have, and what we are trying to accomplish together. It can never be about one person if we are trying to have a great team, culture and winning tradition.

Now, that being said, we need to treat people with the respect that they deserve.



Did we get it completely right with Daniele in how we dealt with him? No, I don’t think we did. Our view was that this was probably going to be his last year.

Let me give you a scenario that shows why it was such a difficult decision.

Let’s say we have Daniele and another defensive midfielder. We only have 24 people on this team, so we have two defensive midfielders. What if, in the third game of the year, God forbid, the other defensive midfielder breaks his leg? What does the team do then?

Daniele had said he would like to play 10 to 15 games next season. So what does the team do then? You can't buy another player - the transfer market doesn’t open until January.

It's almost impossible to bring up a 17 or an 18-year-old and throw them into one of the most important positions on the team in a league like Serie A.

So what do you do? And if you're in Champions League or Europa League, that's three games a week. That's a physical impossibility that Daniele himself admitted.

While I would love to have Daniele on the team, you only have two positions and if one gets hurt, Roma is screwed. It's just as simple as that.

You can't move an attacking midfielder into a defensive midfielder position. That is a specialty position. You can't do it. That's our rationale - it's just realistic. It's a football and team decision. It's not about a single player – as much as Daniele is a great, great player and a spectacular person.



Daniele has been very loyal to AS Roma and AS Roma has been very loyal to Daniele. People cannot question our loyalty, because we said, 'Daniele, we'd like to have you as part of AS Roma for the rest of your life’. That's pretty loyal to me. We never said, 'Goodbye. See ya later. Have a great life.’

We want Daniele to be part of this club forever and hopefully he will be.



I made the incredibly hard decision not to go to Daniele’s last game because it was his day and I didn’t want to detract from that. If you want to protest me, that's fine but I didn't want to take any attention away from what should be a celebration of De Rossi’s brilliant career and it was.

I'll have my conversations with Daniele in private. We exchanged texts on Thursday morning and I’ve invited him to come and see me after his vacation and spend some time with me. So if you think there's hard feelings or we're not going to speak or anything, you're dead wrong. It’s the same thing with Francesco. I've invited Francesco and his family to come to stay with me and I hope they do.