Daniele De Rossi recounts growing up a Roma fan, representing the Giallorossi and more | OneFootball

Roma legend Daniele De Rossi was a guest on the last episode of the YouTube series The Overlap on Tour: Unseen.

The former Giallorossi player and coach spoke about his experience in Rome.

“Football is very important for us in Rome, in general for us Italians, especially here in Rome, that’s why there’s a lot of pressure.”

“The fans love the loyalty of a player, the effort put in on the pitch. Obviously, then they would like to win. We spent 10-12 years without winning but coming very close, with 9 second places and it’s crazy, against clubs built with 200 million more than us.”

“We never won but, in those seasons, we won many games and people were fine with that.”

“Everyone here wants to play for Roma and sometimes it happens and then you have to make a choice.”

“If you are lucky enough you can afford to choose whether to go to a better club or stay here. I made my decision, a bad decision in football terms but for me it went well like this.”

“Totti and Giannini and me? It’s about the love of the people for this team. It’s not just about the three of us, there are also many other players, only others were not good enough to be able to choose whether to stay but it’s the dream of every Roman child.”

“I started out as a striker and then became a midfielder. I was 16, we were losing against a Tuscan team. The captain, a midfielder like I would be in my career, was sent off and the coach told me to come on and play in the same position as him. It went well, we won 2-1.”

“In the next game I played in that position again, it was against Pescara, I remember everything because it changed my life and so I went to the Primavera with the same coach, playing in midfield.”

“Fabio Capello saw me play and I never looked back. During that season I managed to go on the bench a couple of times and I felt like a small part of that season. The following year, I played 4-5 games and in the season after that Capello tried to sign Davids but the deal didn’t go through.”

“I had teams that wanted me, including Chievo, Empoli and Reggina but I decided to stay because I believed I could play and everyone told me I was crazy and that I would never play with players of the calibre of Emerson, Dacourt, Tommasi, Zanetti. I played 25-26 games in the end.”