Pallotta on Curva Sud, derby win and Baldissoni

“It was a good weekend,” Pallotta enthused to Roma Radio host David Rossi. “It's just continuing. The team just seems to be getting better and better. They're in great shape; they're running for 90 minutes. They looked phenomenal the whole game. I didn't have to do my usual pacing around my house. I actually sat and watched them a little more quietly this time.”

It looks like we're on the right track - as a team and as a club. Is everything going the way you wish?

“It looks really good. As I said, the team has been playing great. You get a little worried about these injuries here and there and a little bummed out that [Mohamed] Salah's going to be out for a few weeks but I think this break is good to heal a couple of the other minor aches and pains that the players have. I think Rudi and his coaching staff are really starting to hit their stride and they can just practically watch the team getting better and the players – which you remember, a lot of the players are new to us – playing together, playing pretty well together.”

At the start of the season some people said the roster was too small but we saw in the most difficult match, the derby, that people like Rudiger, Vainqueur and Iago Falque are very important for this team and are very good players….

“I think the week before, when we played against Inter, you could also see that. I think we completely outplayed them the whole game and the goalie played great for them and we came up short. But if you'd said to 99% of the people a week ago that you would have no De Rossi, no Pjanic, no Strootman in the midfield, how are we going to play? I think we answered that on Sunday. We didn't have any of them and we still dominated. Castan is pretty much getting close to being there too and I can't wait for Leo to come back but the players just needed a little time to play together and they all know their roles. I thought they played the best together that we've seen this year on Sunday. I think it bodes well for the rest of the season. We've just got to keep that pace up.

“By the way, David… Mauro just showed up in my office. I had no idea he was coming to Boston. Can anybody tell me if he's on vacation or what's going on?”

Some people have tried to put you against a part of the supporters - especially the Curva Sud, for a joke you made. Everybody understands the joke but maybe you should say something about that and say once and for all that you're not against the Curva Sud!

“I don't read Italian that well but I certainly could read the front page of the paper and first of all that's not what I said. It just wasn't the true spirit of what I was saying. I was joking. Someone sent me a video of the supporters outside the hotel – which, by the way, I thought was tremendous that they're maybe having their issues with the seating but at the same time they were all out there in front of the hotel and they were cheering for the team and wishing them well and then went off and watched it in a number of different locations.

“And when I got a text on that I was just laughing back and said, ‘I'm watching the game with Alex Zecca and a couple of my friends and we were chanting 'Where is Curva?' You know, it was a joke.

“We're behind our fans and we're trying very, very hard to find a solution to this and we don't think it should be a big issue anymore. We think there's a solution in hand. I think we have, hopefully, some meetings set up next week with the Prefect and others.

“We miss our fans and the team misses the fans. We had a great group in there but we should have been full in a game like that. Hopefully there's a solution fairly quickly. But I don't know how many times I have to say it that I'm not against the Curva Sud or true fans.

“I will always have issues with some people – and I call them people, not fans – who will do things that are detrimental to the team. That's it. It's just as simple as that. If someone is going to shit on one of our players, and I mean our players, all of Roma's players, I'm not going to put up with that. If someone is going to call players to the Curve and give them crap, we're just not going to put up with that – that's just not necessary.

“But for 99.9% of the people supporting Roma, they're great fans, we love them and at the end of the day I think our actions speak louder than the words. I think in the last three years, and I look at it as a little more than three years or about three years this January when we started making changes like Italo and Mauro and others coming in, if you just look at what we've done, I think all we're trying to do is make Roma one of the best teams in the world and to do things that our fans worldwide appreciate and can look at Roma and the players with pride no matter where they walk, whether it's in Rome, whether it's in the rest of Italy, whether it's in Europe, whether it's in the United States, and know that we're working hard to create a great team. Everything we're doing is towards that.”

I imagine you last Sunday having the same reaction as Daniele De Rossi in the stands, raising your hands and shouting the names of Dzeko and Gervinho. Is that far from the truth?

“You know me, I probably had a few swearwords thrown in there too. I have a very difficult time watching the game. I was in Miami a week ago at some meetings and there's a great Roma fan club that Tonino in Miami has. He built this tremendous club in South Beach and I can't go down there and watch it because I'm just too crazed about it. So I tend to turn on a bunch of TVs in the house and walk from room to room to room so I don't miss anything and I pace at the game.

“As you can see, when I'm in the stadium, I'm not sitting in a seat. That's kind of the way I was somewhat with the Celtics too but it's way more with Roma how I watch a game. It's a little different than most, probably. Daniele's reaction was tremendous. Actually I thought Florenzi's was pretty good when he's on the bench and he has the hood on and you couldn't see his face and it was almost like he was a three-year-old boy holding on, waiting for something.”

I'd like to stay with you in Boston next year and watch a Roma game with you and Roma TV and see you in that mood, walking around in your house and yelling...

“The problem with that, David, might be that you're going to have to bleep out half the game. If you put it on mute and just do it by my hands and my jumping around and stuff we could probably do it but if you have the voice going, it might be every three seconds going 'BLEEP... BLEEP... BLEEP'.

Do you want to say something about what you're doing in Boston at the moment?

“What we're doing in Boston is... unfortunately I had a long trip planned in Rome and in Milan over the next 10-12 days but we just have so much stuff that we're trying to get done with the stadium, which is such a complicated process. The easiest place to do it is in Boston where we have architects and our construction guys and design people and finance people and all of that, so unfortunately I can't make it to Rome until what looks like the second week of December for a week or so, then a lot more in the spring once we get a lot of this settled down.

“And I was reading the paper this morning and no one has gotten right why Mauro is here so we'll just let people keep guessing and writing what they want. But as much as anything, I haven't seen Mauro in a while and it's just a lot of catch-up stuff that we're doing and the easiest thing since we had planned to do it in Rome over the next week was for Mauro during the break to come here for three days and just to catch up on a lot of different things. Nothing special, just good to see him and a good catch-up.”

And you have to deal with Baldissoni's holidays in Boston...

“I think he thought it was going to be really, really warm out here so someone said they saw him yesterday afternoon on the roof of the hotel lying out in a bathing suit but it can't be, it's only about 60 degrees here. But somebody said they sighted him, I think Zecca said he saw him...”

So we'll see you here for the Christmas party and we'll do some beeps together.

“Great. I hope to see you soon. Ciao.”