Pallotta: 'Roma had no choice'

By Football Italia staff

Roma President Jim Pallotta hit back at critics claiming “the club is a supermarket. We had no choice” with Miralem Pjanic and Mohamed Salah.

The Giallorossi have shown a tendency to sell their top players every summer, most notably Pjanic to Juventus and Salah to Liverpool.

“Things aren’t as simple as a player goes or we transfer him. Let me give you an example. There’s a frustration on my part that people say Roma are a supermarket,” Pallotta told Sirius XM radio.

The second part of the interview is here.

“When you think about it, Pjanic had a release clause and he had to go. Salah is tearing up the Premier League, he said he wanted to leave and had no time left on his contract, so we had no choice.

“There are things that go on behind the scenes that people don’t realise, as either players want to leave or there are things we have to do. We’re not just trying to sell players.”

Roma hired former Sevilla director of sport Monchi in April and he is transforming their transfer strategy.

“It took him a little time to settle, because as we all know, Rome isn’t that easy to come in to with the media, and the amount of media on it, so that was a little different to him.

“He came in last year without having a lot of time on the transfer market. There was a lot of cleaning up to do and putting in his own processes, that takes some time.

“We’ve been unlucky with a few injuries, although Aleksandar Kolarov has had a great year and Cengiz Under is really starting to play pretty well. He scored a really, really pretty goal for Turkey.

“We have Under locked up, we have a five-year deal with him. It’s similar to Alisson, people saying the same sort of thing. I’ve been a fan of Alisson since the first day he’s been with us and am glad he’s finally been able to show how good he is, as he’s been incredible for us. I think players like Patrik Schick are going to be very useful going forward.

“Monchi has had to deal with a lot of issues with Financial Fair Play and some of the mess we still had with that. There’s a little more work to do, but we’ve identified a lot of items to make the team better for the next five years.

“He was probably a little surprised at the first three, four months on the difficulty of getting everything in place, but we have a really trusting relationship.”

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