Q&A: Pallotta talks to Roma Radio

Here’s the full transcript of Pallotta’s interview with Roma Radio host David Rossi…

I was jealous of you being on a US radio show yesterday, so now you join us here…

“Well, Charlie Stilitano’s radio show [SirusXM FC], he asked me to be on it because we are going to be announcing the tour we are going to be doing this summer in the United States. We have a great lineup of teams we are going to be facing this summer, so I was doing him a favour.

“But it’s very interesting to see some of the words were taken completely out of context. But I’m used to it in Rome. I think Donald Trump would have a blast with some of the journalists and radio stations in Rome. Sometimes it seems to me that is where fake news was invented.”

Jim, in fact, reading your words through the sites and the press, I understood that everything is kind of a disaster. The team is tired, the market was wrong, so what’s happening? What’s the story?

“Let’s be clear here, the facts: if you look at part of the last game, the team in the last five or 10 minutes, some of the players looked tired. And that’s not a reflection of training, that’s not a reflection of the coach, I would first of all never criticise Luciano in public. That just doesn’t happen. If I have any conversations with Luciano, that’s just in private between him and me. It’s stupid to think I am going to have any criticism of him like that and I didn’t.

“The team has obviously had a lot of games in a row, and a lot of big games in a row. And many times in some of those games you are working even harder, there’s a lot of nervous energy, a lot of adrenaline, and sometimes, for a period, you get down. It’s just game after game after game – and we’ve had a very tough stretch of games in term of time. The guys are clearly in shape but, you know, that stuff happens. It’s not a criticism, it’s factual.

“And sometimes in seasons, I don’t care what sport it is, there are lulls. That’s what happens. It’s not a mental issue, that’s crazy to suggest - you can see in the games that it is not a mental issue.

“Do I think they will bounce back? Of course I do, I have a lot of faith in them. But sometimes when you are missing people, you have an injury in some spots or you don’t have your full contingent – you look at Rudiger, not in, not having a chance to play on [Thursday]. You have to acknowledge, sometimes with a fast-fast-fast team like we played, you know Lyon is known to be an attacking team, well maybe Rudiger could play some of that game and give someone a rest who has played a lot.

“It’s not a reflection of the players themselves – but making this shit up, time after time, it is just tiring. I might have to do a radio show with you every week to explain what goes on!”

Jim, talking about the matches, the recent defeats, we can say they are first legs and nothing is finished. We can still go on, we can go far?

“Obviously we can. Unfortunately, we gave up a late goal – but I don’t know, I watched that Barcelona game and I don’t think anyone thought there was a chance in hell before the game, and certainly with eight minutes left. So anything can happen in those games and we certainly have a strong enough offence and a tough-enough defence and being healthy, then we can go on. I never thought that progressing wasn’t a possibility.”

Another issue, very important, was about last summer’s market. They report that you were upset about that situation. You were making a different consideration instead…

“Transfer markets are not easy by any means. It’s not just a question of picking up the phone and saying, ‘I want you’ and it’s done. Everybody knows it’s not easy. Clearly Walter did a good job for us for four plus years, I can’t have any criticism of what Walter did and how hard he worked and what he tried to do. And by the way, whether it is credit or blame on transfer markets, Walter did not work in a vacuum – decisions were made as a small group, so if mistakes were made I’d say you have to blame the group and not one person.

“And the same on the other side, the successes you have to give credit to the group – although more credit probably to the person who found that particular success.

“What we want to do, and we’ve been putting this in place in the last couple of years, is have a great youth system. And if you look up and down our youth system today, we have a lot of talent all the way down to teenagers – you don’t know how they are going to end up but we clearly have a tremendous amount of talent.

“We have revamped our scouting, how we do it and where we do it, and Walter as head of football operations was a big part of that over the last few years with a few other people. So my comments were to do with the fact we do have a lot of good youth, I hate to see good youth loaned out, we do look to loan then out if they won’t get experience here… but one of the frustrations is there are so many times when we have lent players out for experience and playing time and they don’t get that playing time and experience. And often you can see that they are better than the players being put out by these other teams.

“The second thing is, there is always this fine line between experience and youth and it is not always easy to get that right. One of the things with older players is - they are experienced. With youth, there is an immaturity because you haven’t played that much in bigger situations. But on the other hand, that fine line is, as you get older it’s not as easy to bounce back from game to game, if you are playing a lot of games. It’s just a fact of life, as you get older the recovery time takes longer, the muscle injuries become more frequent.

“I’m going to be 59 in a couple of days and my recovery time is going downhill really fast. So when you have 21-year-olds or 19 or 22-year olds, it’s just amazing how fast you can recover. So this is balance, it’s not a criticism; we’re always trying to find that correct balance.

“And also, what hurt us, is some injuries this season. When we lost Florenzi. Florenzi is the energy bunny for us, I don’t think people realise how much we got hurt by not having Florenzi in. He can play right back, midfield, in attack. He is a jack of all trades, he can do it all, he doesn’t seem to get tired either – so when you lose players like that who are very valuable to the team, that changes the dynamic too. And, by the way, if you look at the different types of line-ups and the different tactics, Luciano has done an incredibly good job with what he has had to deal with in some of these cases.”

Jim, talking about Florenzi, today it is his birthday. He is 26. Do you want to send a message to him?

“I didn’t think he was that old! I’m wishing him a happy birthday – I didn’t know it was his birthday today. I wish we can get him back fast, and looking forward to seeing him when I’m over there in a few weeks. Hopefully he’ll be back in the summer, ready for the start of the new season. I know he’s had a frustrating year but he’s worked very, very hard – and it’s a shame. We miss him and I miss that smile!”