After Fabio Paratici, Piero Ausilio and Igli Tare’ now it’s Monchi’s turn to be interviewed by our editor in chief Gianluca Di Marzio. Roma’s sporting director answered a series of questions on his tenure in Italy’s capital starting with his approach to the transfer market:”When the window arrives the world is focused on the sporting directors. Everyone hopes we acquire 3/4 players. For me the January window shouldn’t change a team much, if you need to make 4/5 additions it means you did something wrong in the summer. We have sixteen scouts that work with me, we travel a lot. This isn’t just Monchi doing this”
Monchi described his experience at Roma so far:”We need to do something for these fans, it has been many years since they won something. I didn’t come here to sell Salah, Rudiger, Paredes and other. I came here to do my job and at those times we needed to fix our balance sheet. For me the first year was hard because we had to make some significant profits, but it was an excellent year since we finished third in the league and made the Champions League semifinal. Last season we slowly fixed our finances so I only made the sales I deemed useful for the club”
The differences between Spain and Italy:”Here it’s like a showcase, everything comes out. This is the biggest change for me. In Spain the transfer market is important but not everything becomes news like here. Certainly I don’t have a magic wand, I always worked with both young and older players. We’ll need time but in the end I think fans and the media will understand the way I work”
Monchi discussed one of his best new additions and a player who got away:”Zaniolo? We were in the middle of the Nainggolan negotiation and we asked for either Zaniolo or Radu. Inter didn’t want to sell Zaniolo, they aren’t dumb, but they wanted Nainggolan. We got to the point where we said either we get Zaniolo or the deal is off, there’s a great relationship with Piero Ausilio. Malco? I can’t imagine that a club can spend all those millions to buy a player after they knew he was doming to Roma”
Monchi was asked about his relationship to Totti:”He’s a smart man, he likes to observe me during negotiations. He is making more contributions and what he says makes more and more sense”
