Daniele De Rossi played his last game for Roma under a deluge. Seagulls kept dive-bombing into the Stadio Olimpico. It was like Ostia, the city’s seaside, where De Rossi grew up.
Over the course of his career, it has often felt like De Rossi brought the ocean crashing into the ground; Neptune’s roar. That night, tearful locals looked up at the heavens and made the sentimental remark that Rome was crying. But as De Rossi and his family did a lap of honour around the Olimpico’s running track, their captain smiled.
He was going out on his terms without the existential crisis his team-mate Francesco Totti experienced when the club called time on his career. The playlist he chose included a song by one of his favourite bands — Oasis: The Masterplan.
De Rossi, flanked by his family, bids farewell to AS Roma as a player in 2019 (via Getty Images)
If De Rossi happened to have one at the time, it did not include a role as an executive. He wasn’t ready to retire and wanted the one and only move of his career to be authentic to him. Rather than go to MLS or somewhere lucrative, he joined Boca Juniors; his curiosity piqued, his imagination captured by tales from xeneize team-mates Dani Osvaldo, Nicolas Burdisso and Leandro Paredes.
He loved his brief time in Buenos Aires. A doting father, De Rossi cut short the experience after six months in order to be closer to his daughter. He hung up his boots once and for all and, as Italians often say, had to decide what he wanted to do when he grew up.
“Look,” De Rossi said on the beach in Ostia. “It all depends on whether or not you want to coach. Because I think coaching is the best, the worst and the toughest job in the world — our world.”
De Rossi knew better than most. He’d seen it first-hand. It was the decision his father, Alberto, made at the end of his playing career, a second act spent bringing through youngsters such as Daniele in Roma’s academy. “A coach’s family doesn’t enjoy an easy time of it. They’re always having to move around,” he said. “A coach’s wife has to share in their joys, frustrations, pain and what’s going on in their head.
“I already think about football for hours on end; imagine what it’s like for a coach. You go to bed and dream about tactics. So first of all I need to figure out whether I’m willing to put my family through that and go through this kind of stress.”
De Rossi thought long and hard about it. But deep down he knew all along: The Masterplan was to coach Roma. “It’d be a great story, wouldn’t it? Finish your playing career without winning anything (apart from a few Coppe Italia) and then win as a coach.”
He got started on his Pro Licence and accepted a role working under Roberto Mancini with the national team.
Mancini had finally got his man. He had tried to sign De Rossi for Manchester City, efforts that forced Roma to make him the highest-paid player in Serie A. They quickly won the European Championship together. In the Wembley dressing room after the penalty shootout against England, De Rossi, in an Armani shirt and tie, was the first to celebrate by jumping on one of the tables, sliding its length face-first before somersaulting off; the fist pump, quintessential DDR.
DDR performs his party piece after Italy win at Wembley (Claudio Villa/Getty Images)
His first head coaching role came in October 2022 at second-division SPAL, the club owned by Joe Tacopina, one of Donald Trump’s erstwhile lawyers. Tacopina knew De Rossi from his brief time on the periphery of one of the ownership groups involved in Roma. However, the experience at SPAL was not a good one.
Many of the players who had been with the team in Serie A were sold off. De Rossi didn’t have a pre-season and called his first transfer window, the January one, “quite surreal”. “(Fabio) Lupo (the technical director) says I’m pleased with it. In general, I tend to talk for myself. He knows what he said wasn’t true. I’m happy with the players I’ve got, but in the spirit of collaboration he needs to listen to the guidance from the coach.”
De Rossi was fired soon afterwards, with 15 points from 16 games. The decision came as a shock to Radja Nainggolan, his former team-mate, whom De Rossi had convinced to come to Ferrara telling “a sea of lies”, Il Ninja joked. “They guaranteed me he’d get until the end of the season and that we’d get out of trouble,” Nainggolan said. “Ten days later, they sacked him.”
It was Valentine’s Day 2023, the birthday of one of De Rossi’s daughters. “I was surrounded by children at a kids’ party,” he recalled. “They were all cheerful and happy. I’d just got the boot.”
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry and, from Ostia, the prospect of coaching Roma in the near future seemed like a speck on the horizon. They were reaching back-to-back European finals under Jose Mourinho. Interest in De Rossi instead came from Hellas Verona and Salernitana, top-flight relegation battlers with whom he might enhance his reputation via a great escape.
Serendipitously, they were his first two opponents when Roma’s owners, the Friedkins, called him and asked if he would step into the breach and replace Mourinho last month.
To some, it felt too soon, too much of a risk. To others, no one other than De Rossi could placate the piazza and keep the fans from turning on the owners for dismissing the most popular coach in the club’s history.
“You don’t turn down Roma,” De Rossi said. “It was the same with (Andrea) Pirlo a few years back when he accepted the Juve job. There are those who shy away and those who throw themselves in. This isn’t about nostalgia. I would have only said ‘no’ if I thought the team was a crap team. If I was sure I’d look silly, I wouldn’t have gone for it. This is a strong team.”
De Rossi could not turn down AS Roma (Tiziano Ballabio/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
De Rossi has always stood up to be counted.
He put his hand up to take a penalty in the shootout that decided the 2006 World Cup final against France even though it was his first game back from suspension after elbowing Brian McBride of the U.S. in the group stages. He wanted to make amends knowing simultaneously that, just as a goal might bring redemption and a place in history, a miss might throw him further into the inferno and bring infamy.
It took immense character and helps explain why De Rossi never wavered in taking on his old team even though they were down in ninth. He signed until the end of the season without the guarantee he’d get the job on a permanent basis, showing the same duty of care and service fellow Roman Claudio Ranieri displayed when he last became the team’s caretaker five years ago.
The only condition included in De Rossi’s contract was a bonus in the event Roma qualify for the Champions League, a competition the club has failed to participate in since his final year as a player. “I asked (the Friedkins) to treat me like a coach, not like a talisman, a player or a legend who goes on a lap of honour with Romolo (the club mascot) and they were in complete agreement over that.”
The atmosphere at De Rossi’s first game was unusual. Banners saying “Welcome back, Daniele” alternated with others in tribute to Mourinho. “You defended our Roma, guided us to victory, Jose Mourinho the eternal glory”. De Rossi had publicly backed Mourinho in his first season at Roma and recalled getting a good luck message when he got the SPAL job.
He has not denigrated his predecessor, focusing on the present rather than the past.
It could hardly have gone better. Roma have won six of seven games in the league, their only loss coming against Inter, a team that has only won in 2024. De Rossi appeared to break with Mourinho’s setup in his first game against Verona, swapping out a back three for a back four. But since then, he has expediently alternated between systems.
Paulo Dybala races to the new coach to celebrate scoring against Torino last month (Silvia Lore/Getty Images)
Dean Huijsen and Angelino — Tiago Pinto’s last signings as general manager — have made instant impacts. Lost causes have found form again. They include World Cup winner Paredes, who played alongside De Rossi in his first spell at the club. Lorenzo Pellegrini, Roma’s captain, has emphatically put all the off-the-pitch paparazzo drama that engulfed him earlier in the season behind him. He has eight goal involvements in De Rossi’s nine games in charge.
Paulo Dybala has played his best football since his last MVP season at Juventus. His hat-trick against Torino and goal against Monza took him to 12 league goals for the season. Romelu Lukaku had 10 goals, making them the first duo to do so for Roma since Mohamed Salah and Edin Dzeko in 2016-17.
Missing pre-season has recently caught up with the Belgian, who has suddenly cut a tired figure. A bad miss against Inter attracted criticism, but De Rossi defended him. He has shown the sort of human touch as a coach that made him such a popular team-mate.
De Rossi has been patient and understanding with Chris Smalling whose pain threshold was called into question by Mourinho. He has tried to include players such as Renato Sanches and Houssem Aouar — players Mourinho ended up disregarding.
Bold decisions have been taken too, no more so than De Rossi making Mile Svilar his No 1 at the expense of Rui Patricio, whose errors caused the more caustic Roma fans to re-name him ‘Rui Pasticcio’ (Pasticcio means a right old mess, a hash of something). Svilar rewarded the faith De Rossi showed in him by becoming the hero in the Europa League play-off round against Feyenoord.
His penalty saves meant Roma won their first shootout since 2002 when a young De Rossi stepped up and helped his hometown club knock Triestina out of the Coppa Italia.
Svilar pushes a penalty away against Feyenoord (David S.Bustamante/Soccrates/Getty Images)
“It was my first European night in this capacity and it was great,” De Rossi said. “In the last two years, we’ve gotten rid of that fatalism typical of us Roma fans. We have these sayings like “mai ‘na gioia” (fortune never smiles on Romans, they can never get any satisfaction). But we’ve moved on. We’re no longer the ugly ducklings. Often we win too.”
De Rossi forgot himself for a moment and dashed under the Curva Sud to commune with his people. “I’m a bit ashamed of myself. I’m trying to stay cool and measured, but you can understand I haven’t changed all that much since my playing days. I had to hold myself back from leaping on the gate (of the Sud) like when I was 25.”
The fan inside him can only be suppressed so much. When De Rossi retired, his wife, the actress Sarah Felberbaum, hired make-up artists to change her husband’s appearance so he could go watch a game in the Sud without being mobbed by the fans. And, besides, supporters want passion. Romanisti have delighted in seeing the vena, the frontal vein popping out of De Rossi’s forehead when he celebrates goals on the sideline.
Roma have seemed more attacking under De Rossi. The skill players have come to the fore and the team have scored three or more goals in four of seven league games.
But they have over-performed their xG (expected goals). Dybala, Pellegrini and Huijsen have all scored worldies, and Roma’s 19.9 penalty area entries per game are down on the 30.2 under Mourinho. They’ve also benefited from five penalties, a soft-ish fixture list and have got away with conceding the same goal over and over again from crosses.
De Rossi back with his people (Giuseppe Maffia/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Brighton represent arguably his biggest test since last year’s Champions League finalists, Inter.
De Rossi considers Roberto De Zerbi “a genius”. They have become friends over the last few years and went for dinner with Pep Guardiola, Enzo Maresca and De Rossi’s former team-mate Aleksandar Kolarov at Tast in Manchester. De Rossi and De Zerbi’s daughters live together in London and go to watch Roma at one of the fan clubs.
“Preparing for the game will give me a few sleepless nights,” De Rossi said. It’s up to him to design his latest Masterplan.
(Top photo: Giuseppe Bellini/Getty Images)
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