Sabatini explains Roma exit

By Football Italia staff

Walter Sabatini warned Monchi might find it difficult to adapt to Serie A markets, explains how he signed Radja Nainggolan and why he quit Roma.

This evening Sevilla formally announced that they had reached an agreement to terminate Monchi’s contract by mutual consent, which effectively means he is free to sign on for Roma.

“I’ve never met Monchi, but I know he is a young director of sport who always did his work well at Sevilla,” ex-director of sport Sabatini told Pagine Romaniste.

“He’ll find that the timing and methods of the transfer market in Italy are totally different to in other leagues. We have a fiery, Mediterranean approach, so we play with the market, which is a big game made of suppositions and realities.

“We’ll see if he manages to quickly adapt and understand the dynamics, but he is an absolute reliable professional.”

Sabatini left a few months ago and won’t deny it was mainly due to his rapport with President James Pallotta.

“It was a splendid rapport for the first two or three years, full of mutual respect and trust, then things deteriorated. Other people got involved and did some talking, so things became less clear.

“As I am aggressive on the transfer market, I need to feel secure, that someone’s got my back. When this didn’t happen because he started to debate or comment on the things I did, quite rightly because that’s entirely acceptable, I lost that sharpness.

“I risked losing that aggression and incisiveness, but above all the immediacy of knowing I could make a decision at 2am and be backed.

“If I had to explain to you how the Radja Nainggolan situation went, it could only have been done by a man who felt totally backed by his club.

“At that time he had already chosen Juventus, thanks to the inclination of his entourage, we negotiated at impossible hours, meetings at 4am, shouting, then €9m for half the player from Cagliari I expected a little feedback.

“It was a crazy operation, but I felt it in my gut. I knew it was so necessary for Roma that I’d have done anything to get Nainggolan there.

“At the time I was so in sync with Pallotta that we got a player like Nainggolan, who I think will go down as one of the best players Roma have ever had.

“It went wrong with Pallotta not because of a veto on a transfer, but there was a situation where I felt he didn’t share my ideas, so I lost some of that determination and confidence.

“Roma deserve a director of sport who feels 100 per cent in his role and can make immediate decisions. I therefore took my own decision, which was to no longer be the Roma director of sport, because there were centrifugal forces at work.

“With great regret and the anxiety I still feel now, I asked Pallotta to terminate the contract. I thank him for giving me that, even if a little late.”

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