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Right from the beginning of Gian Piero Gasperini’s time as Roma manager, there have been people who believed it would all end in tears. Despite a brilliant record with Atalanta, whom he made into consistent top four contenders, as well as winning the Europa League in 2024, a section of his new club’s support was opposed to his appointment. “Respect our history,” read one banner outside the Stadio Olimpico last May. “Don’t bring that shit Gasperini to [Roma’s training ground at] Trigoria.”
Such objections were born more from rivalry than doubts about the quality of his work. Unsurprisingly, given that the Giallorossi were in direct competition with Atalanta throughout most of Gasperini’s nine-year tenure there, he had made various comments that got under fans’ skin.
This tension was acknowledged at his presentation as Roma manager last June. Sitting next to him was Claudio Ranieri – his predecessor in this role, who had now moved upstairs to operate as a “senior adviser” to the club’s owners. “I didn’t like Gasperini,” said Ranieri. “I’ve told him the fans didn’t like him either.”
Everybody laughed, back then, at what felt like a lighthearted acknowledgment of football’s tribalism. But comments by Ranieri this month made you wonder if he was ever joking at all. Interviewed by Dazn before Roma’s win over Pisa on 10 April, he suggested Gasperini had been the club’s fourth choice candidate for the job, saying he put forward “five or six” names and that “three of those didn’t come”.
Ranieri was defending his own record, after suggestions – encouraged by the manager – that Roma had not done enough to strengthen their squad. He said Gasperini had been chosen specifically because the owners believed he would know how to develop a long-term project and that he had been consulted over every new signing.
“Not one player came in without his approval,” said Ranieri, before listing several young talents added over the last two transfer windows who have featured sparingly to date. “[Jan] Ziolkowski, [Lorenzo] Venturino, [Bryan] Zaragoza … We tried to give the manager a team who came within a point of Champions League qualification last year, with some players he could help to mature.”
These sorts of tensions have a way of coming out when a club falls short of its goals. Roma made an encouraging start under Gasperini and were third in the table as recently as 27 February. They drew 3-3 with Juventus, maintaining a four-point advantage, at the start of March.
Since then, though, everything has unravelled. Roma went five games without a win across all competitions, a run that saw them knocked out of the Europa League by another Italian club, Bologna. They finally got back on track with a 1-0 win over relegation-threatened Lecce, only to get smashed 5-2 by Inter the following week.
By the time they arrived for Saturday’s game at home to Gasperini’s former club, Atalanta, Roma had fallen all the way to sixth. Juventus were now three points ahead of them, with Napoli and Como both having overtaken as well. Even qualification to the Europa League was beginning to look like shaky ground.
At a pre-game press conference, Gasperini acknowledged Ranieri’s remarks, describing them as “truly unexpected” and an “incredible surprise”. He said that in responding to them now his No 1 priority was not to do anything to destabilise the club.
But he ended the session abruptly after a discussion about his past with Atalanta brought him to tears. “The anomaly was that for nine years they played in Europe with the best teams in Italy and Europe, making a profit,” said Gasperini. “This is the anomaly. Making a profit every year. This is the extraordinary thing.
“And that’s not just to my credit. Clearly. They had a very capable club leadership who could work in symphony with the manager. At a certain point this symphony changed. A bit because the ownership changed, a bit because the father [Antonio Percassi] who I was certainly more linked to …”
He stood up and left the room at this point, abandoning that last sentence uncompleted. Percassi, who bought Atalanta after they were relegated to Serie B in 2010, remains as that club’s president, but Gasperini’s implication was that the working dynamic changed after a majority share was sold to a US consortium in 2022.
Might he nevertheless have been regretting his decision to step away from a place where he felt protected and take on a new challenge at Roma? Only Gasperini knows all the reasons he made that choice, but it has been tempting to view him as a man with a point to prove: one who still needed to show he could succeed at one of Italy’s biggest clubs, 14 years on from an ill-fated five-game stint at Inter.
This season has not been a disaster on that scale. But after Roma went on to draw 1-1 with Atalanta on Saturday, they do look likely to fall short once again in their ambition of returning to the Champions League.
This was an entertaining game between two flawed sides. Nikola Krstovic was given too much space to turn and give Atalanta the lead with a shot from the edge of the box after 12 minutes, but Roma responded determinedly as they carved out chances for Matías Soulé and Donyell Malen in quick succession. Mario Hermoso’s volleyed equaliser just before half-time felt well earned.
Roma were closer to finding a winner after the interval. Malen and Stephan El Shaarawy continued to unsettle with their directness and Hermoso had a header clawed off the bar by Marco Carnesecchi. It does not feel as though Gasperini’s players, at least, have abandoned him.
Still, the question of whether Roma are progressing is a fair one to ask. Despite changing managers eight times in eight years, results have been astonishingly consistent. This season’s team have 58 points after 33 games. At the equivalent stage last season, Roma had 57. Going backward in time, it was 58 again in each of the three preceding years, 56 in 2020-21, 57 in 2019-20, and 55 in 2018-19.
Roma fans need set their minds all the way to 2017-18 to remember a campaign that looked significantly different. They finished third that year, under Eusebio Di Francesco, and reached a Champions League semi-final. Edin Dzeko was up front, and the midfield was formed of Daniele De Rossi, Radja Nainggolan and Kevin Strootman.
Nobody at Roma expected Gasperini to come in and immediately bring the team back to those levels. As Ranieri has pointed out repeatedly, they are working under challenging financial fair play obligations. They have been unlucky with injuries at times this year also, even if there is tension here too around the handling of Wesley’s recent hamstring strain.
What the club wanted most of all from this season was a sense of progress. Instead, if Ranieri and Gasperini cannot resolve their differences, this summer looks likely to require yet another fresh start.
