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Pallotta arrives in Rome

John Solano
I

(RomaPress Live – Hotel De Russia): Roma president James Pallotta touched down in the Italian capital today. The American has a packed scheduled of meetings and will also attend tonight’s match against Barcelona. These are his words to present media members:

Confident for tonight?
Yes, I think we played very well in the first leg, we were unlucky with the own goals, there were three penalties for us: a hand ball, the one on Dzeko definitely and Pellegrini was on the line. If we make it 1-1, things would have changed, but we were unlucky and then the fourth goal arrived, which was stupid. But I thought we played well.

Do you trust Di Francesco and the team?
Yes sure.

Are you satisfied with the results in Serie A?
No, I think that since the match against Genoa in December we have not played as well as we did before but we had a lot of injuries. I am also not happy about that, but sometimes it’s hard to play in the Champions League and prepare right away for the league, it makes things harder. I don’t think the players are as happy or anybody else is, if you look at where we were doing up until the Genoa match we were up there. We’ve got 7 big games starting on Sunday.

News on the main sponsor?
In the next couple months there should be 3-5 good announcements on these sort of things.

Stadium?
I have some meetings on this. At the end of the day, if they don’t get this stuff accelerated and happen quickly we will not have a stadium and we will not be here. The fans need to tell the people to get moving on the stadium. Everything is pretty much close to done, if things are still dragging on past June or July, it will take it out another year and we cannot afford to do that, no one can afford to do that. We have already spent over €60 million on the stadium. These are the things that many don’t know about when they talk about the transfer market and us buying players. We’ve spent probably closer to €70 million on the stadium so far. You can’t keep spending like that and not getting the return that you need.

Will Alisson stay?
Alisson will remain in Rome, he has a long contract. I love him, I never wanted to sell him when they were talking about it a year ago, I always thought he was great and he’s showed it.

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