AFP/Getty Images
Horncastle: Father time wait for no man. Not even the King of Rome
“Terrifying” is how Francesco Totti imagines it. “The end of a dream come true that will have lasted 20 years.”
This was the end of the season before last. Roma’s captain was talking engagingly to Italy’s GQ about the prospect of retirement. “I know it will be a thing of beauty,” he told himself. “Emotional too. An experience shared with the fans.
“I know it’s coming,” he admitted. All he asked was to be able to bow out with dignity. “I’ll be the first to throw in the towel,” Totti admitted. “I don’t want to go out making a fool of myself on the pitch.”
Knowing how dear that is to his heart, it isn’t difficult to appreciate how much the events of Tuesday night will have wounded his pride. Totti was about to come on when Roma were 1-0 down against Real Madrid, the team for whom he could have played and would have won a lot more, including the Ballon d’Or. There were only three minutes plus stoppage time remaining. One moment of genius from him could have salvaged a result. But as the fourth official prepared to key the legendary No.10 into his board and the 24 of the player he was replacing, Alessandro Florenzi, Jesé doubled the visitor’s lead.
The substitution now seemed entirely unnecessary to Roma other than as a token gesture to Totti. You could understand it if he felt like a charity case. A sensation he never wanted to feel. He was put in the exact situation he wanted to avoid and, from the outside looking in, it felt like a humiliation not too dissimilar to when another great No.10, Gianni Rivera was thrown on for the last six minutes of the World Cup final against Brazil in Mexico City in 1970 with Italy already 3-1 down. The difference with Rivera is that he was still in his prime. For Totti instead this felt like the beginning of the end.
Diego Perotti had started for Roma in the False 9 role that Totti had pioneered in Luciano Spalletti’s first spell at the club. One of the team’s best performers on the night for his self sacrifice and effort at preventing Real playing out from the back, the job Perotti did perhaps couldn’t have been done to the same effect by Totti six months shy of his 40th birthday. When Spalletti did make an attacking change it was to introduce the height of Edin Dzeko for Stephan El Shaarawy. Roma needed a focal point. Often when they got in good positions, particularly via Mo Salah, there was no one to cross to in the box. Dzeko could also hold the ball up and allow the team to get up the pitch.
Tactically, it’s hard to quibble with Spalletti decisions. Roma were booed off the pitch in their last Champions League game despite getting the win they needed against BATE Borisov to qualify for the knock-out stages for the first time in five years. Here they lost but were applauded as they left the field. The crowd acknowledged that Roma’s performance didn’t deserve defeat. Florenzi should have had a penalty and generally speaking the improvement under Spalletti is evident. He has brought the fans back to the Olimpico. Roma are looking forward, not back and that’s how it should be but perhaps the saddest thing of all is where Totti stands amidst it all.
For a while now, he hasn’t been the future of this team. Approaching 40, he can’t be. But until this season he fought against the dying of the light to remain its present. Now, however, his place in the hierarchy would indicate with no little sadness and a heavy heart that, as a player, he is the past. Father time waits for no man. Not even the King of Rome. “A non-player” is how one paper put it. Not an ex-player. Not yet. As he left the Olimpico on Wednesday night, a reporter in the mixed zone asked Totti if he would stop and answer a few questions. “By now what’s the point” he replied. It wasn’t sulky or spoilt. It wasn’t flippant or waspish. It was sincere. Brutally honest. An insight into a player coming to terms with the inevitable.
Handling this was never going to be easy for the club and Spalletti could perhaps have treated it with greater delicacy. Totti is special. That doesn’t mean he needs indulging. But it does mean he needs respect. “I train Roma, not just Totti,” Spalletti told AS on Monday. “Getting results is my aim and I make my decisions based on that, not on a player’s backstory.” To be clear no one would ask anything different of Spalletti. In this job, woe betide he who lets his emotions be his guide. The heart can’t rule the head. But the risk is to come across as uncaring, heartless even.
Maybe Spalletti thinks he is doing Totti a favour by making it clear to him. “By now he’s an actor,” he said when Sky Italia re-played him the high-jinx Totti got up to on the bench against Sassuolo when he played a prank on Miralem Pjanic. No malice was intended at least from the smile with which Spalletti said it. It was as thoughtless in its delivery as in its possible interpretation. Marginalising Totti would be a mistake. His career at Roma cannot be allowed to end in exile like those of Agostino di Bartolomei and Giuseppe Giannini, other captains born and bred in the city. Totti is Roma. That isn’t to say he is bigger than the club. But if it means giving him another contract this summer nominally as a player, Roma should do it in a heartbeat because if there is one thing people associate Roma with it is Totti.
It’s not like he is their highest paid player. He is 10th on the wage bill and takes home the same money as Lucas Digne. While he has fallen down the pecking order in team selection, he remains the most important player at the club. People flock to Rome just to see him. For years, going to a Roma game has become as much of a tourist attraction as visiting the Vatican and Colosseum and if that’s the case, it’s down to Totti. He is a walking, talking cultural heritage site. Reason for many to go on a pilgrimage. “My idol,” Luka Modric wrote as he posted a picture with Totti on Wednesday night.
At €2.5m a year, Totti is ‘cheap’ for Roma. It would be much more costly in the eyes of public opinion for a situation to develop in which he feels he has got no option other than to walkaway as was the case with Alessandro Del Piero at Juventus despite him making it absolutely clear he would put pen to paper whatever the terms the club deemed appropriate. Andrea Agnelli was only able to do that because of his family’s status and association with the club and because Juventus were back winning things again. They have retained the Scudetto ever since. Roma are not in the same position of strength.
Del Piero still felt he had something left to give. He still wanted to play. Totti does too. Maybe not quite as much as his great contemporary who is now a pundit. Totti has accepted a role on the bench this season. He hasn’t raised hell. He hasn’t kicked up a fuss. A few extra minutes here or there will do. He shouldn’t be reduced to asking a Sassuolo ball-boy for a game of keepie-uppie. It’s not like Totti is a complete passenger on the pitch. Just see his assist for Pjanic against Frosinone, the icing on the cake of Roma’s first win under Spalletti. If the coach makes a hash of things - a little like Walter Mazzarri did with Javier Zanetti, denying him even a run out in the Milan derby - the club has to make amends. A role of vice-president was offered to Zanetti. The least Roma can do is follow suit.
If, as his wife Ilary suggested, these are his last couple of months as a player, we should savour them. And if Totti hasn’t gone public with an announcement it’s because he either doesn’t want it to become a distraction or because talks over a new contract are expected to be held next month. He did say in January he plans to play for another two years. After Maldini, Zanetti and Del Piero another of the last of Mohicans - curiously one of the few haircuts Totti has never experimented with - begins to walk into the sunset and as he does, the words of Zdenek Zeman spring to mind. Asked to name the three best Italian players of all-time not so long ago, he simply replied: “Totti, Totti and Totti.”
