Pallotta on transfers, youth and Stadio della Roma

Jim, an astonishing win in the derby…

“I couldn’t be happier and more proud of how the guys have responded in the last three months or so. I think from the coaching side, Luciano and his entire staff have been unbelievable. I wish I had made the change earlier. All along I could see it was really a mental issue because the guys were in great shape physically and you can see that now. And what I’m really astonished at is how much fun they look like they are having. Obviously winning helps with that but when I’m seeing the pictures every day from practice and stuff they look like they are enjoying each other. I think they are training harder than they ever have. Luciano and his staff have basically camped out and got apartments at Trigoria!”

Were you worried before the derby? How did you live the 90 minutes?

“Given the way the guys had been playing in the last three months, I certainly felt good that we were prepared for the derby. In football anything can happen, but I knew we were definitely prepared. We came out really strong. I was by myself, watching the game. There was a little period where Lazio made some great substitutions and set us back a little on our heels – Szczesny made some spectacular saves. I was a little nervous there for a while but then Florenzi comes through and Perotti comes through and it turns out to be a big win. But they didn’t give up and they came back, fought back. That’s just a sign of this team. It’s a strong, strong team, which we knew all along – but we just needed the right guidance.

“Frankly, I thought the second goal, Dzeko’s goal, while the net looked open, it wasn’t the easiest goal in the world – because, if it had been another player who was significantly shorter than Dzeko, that ball might have been up closer to his waist and much harder to kick in. We were lucky to have someone like Dzeko in there, someone with his size and ability, and the ball was about knee high for him and would have been waist high for most people … I don’t think it would have been as easy. It was a really great goal. That set the table.

“I’m really happy with the team. It’s funny, actually, just as an aside, I try not to read too much but sometimes I end up looking at the newspapers – it’s amazing to me that it’s almost on a daily basis they are saying Roma wants to sell this player, or this player wants to go, or that Chelsea or somebody is taking these players. We have conversations every week about the football operations side, and we had a lot when we were last in Rome, but we just don’t see that many changes having to be made.

“We have a lot of good young players that are either coming up or coming back. A real group of them. Whether it’s Ponce or Sadiq or Sanabria or Paredes or Nura or…. you just look at the talent that we have and the youngsters coming up – we just don’t have a lot of holes.

“We have a couple of players that are on loan to us that we would love to have stay, but then you look at when people are saying, like Pjanic every day, ‘He wants to go’, that’s just ridiculous. I have no interest, personally, in wanting to sell Miralem.

“That’s just stupid. I love having him on this team. I think he loves it. It’s a great group of guys and coach. That stuff, that kind of talk is just detrimental, because players might think that’s what we are doing, but there has been zero discussion on that. And as far as Roma management, or people say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve made a decision on him,’ that’s a joke. Yeah, my decision on him is I want him to stay! And it’s the same with the others. We don’t have conversations … I don’t want to have conversations. I love what we are building.

“I love what we are building. If we have made any mistakes, all of us as a group, it’s been a mentality of trading too much. I think the first couple of years we had to do that. Walter did a spectacular job with that, we had to trade.

"As much as some people don’t want to see it or admit it, we inherited a situation with really massive losses and that’s why we had UEFA issues. We’ve turned it around but we’ve still got work to do."

- Jim Pallotta

"But I feel good that we have a great foundation, we just need to add a couple of pieces, primarily because of potentially people on loan, more than anything else, but I feel really good about where we are at.

“I’m really excited about what is going on the stadium side for us too.”

The fact of the matter is trust. Roma fans have to trust the work you are doing with Walter, Mauro, Italo and others because you want to build something…

“I think as I said, the first couple of years we had a lot of work to do. We brought in some great players. We had to make trades, unfortunately for some players, where we needed to get the capital accounts in order – we had to do it, it’s UEFA guidelines. There is not a choice on some of this stuff. There really isn’t.

“Something I learned is that the transfer market and the accounting side of it in football is unlike any other accounting I’ve seen, in sports certainly. The only one more bizarre in some ways, to me, is the accounting done for movie companies. So we just had a lot of work. I think we are basically there.

“I think Ricky and Bruno Conti and specifically more Bruno and some of his guys, and Alex Zecca working with the academies in the US, and few other countries – right now I think we have the best academy programme in the US right now thanks to the work Alex has done over the last two years. Bruno has worked a lot with Alex and others to have a good programme, not just in the US, but in other countries.

“We have made some big changes in the last few months in how we are scouting in Italy, which I think is incredibly important. My goal, and it takes work, is to have the best programme in Italy for young players, to come to Rome, to find them and give them a good home.

“I wish things could change just like the flick of a switch and stuff but I try to look to the future and I could not be happier about the way stuff at Trigoria is going right now. I’m talking about the process, which is so important, and the process which we are putting in place, not just for the first team but you can see it with the Primavera team, you can see it with the great job [Alberto De Rossi] is doing with the team.

“It was hilarious to hear people saying a few months ago, ‘Oh, they don’t want Bruno Conti’, or all this other bullshit. We developed a better role that was more important for Roma and taking advantage of Bruno’s strengths for us. And now Bruno has been putting together some great stuff at Trigoria and with Alex and others and it is really going well with what we are trying to build on the youth side.

“It takes time. I think most of the people, maybe I’m wrong, do trust what we’re doing. I know everyone is frustrated, we want to win a Scudetto and we want this and we want that. We are getting there.

“We’ve made a few mistakes, we’ve rectified stuff, we still have stuff to do to get better and we will. I have no intention of going anyway. I’ve said before, you’re stuck with me for a long, long period of time. I’ve got a stadium to build now too, you know.”

You said El Shaarawy had a good haircut. Now we can say you are enjoying much more what he is doing on the pitch!

“There’s no question he wasn’t going to get away with just having a good haircut!”

April is the stadium month. We are getting there with the papers. I know you are working on that a lot. We are talking about days. We are at the finishing line of the process, yes?

“Right, well I think David Ginsberg came in about five or six months ago and has done an unbelievable job of cleaning up and revamping some issues that we’ve had. We still have a few issues but they are pretty workable.

"We expect the dossier – I think we have over 8,000 pages, which is why this stuff takes a long period of time – to put in in the next few weeks and then we have the regional approval process. We’ve had a number of discussions with people already. I have had a number of discussions with people in Rome and Italy and so have a few others in the team and we feel we are getting some great support – it’s great for Rome but it’s also a spectacular project for Italy and a big project for actually all of Europe.

“We’ve had good and continued support from the city and politicians. Obviously the fans want it. I’m not sure they want it as much as I do as I’m going crazy about it every day. I can’t wait for Roma to have its own stadium, a stadium the team deserves. We’ve had five or six days of meetings in Boston with architects and financial people. It’s getting there.”