Gianluca Mancini between slips, metamorphosis and missed fights: “One wanted to run me down, now he esteems me”
Serie A 35ma giornata, i risultati: Napoli ed Inter, che botta e risposta – SerieAnews
Some things, rather than happening in a locker room, seem straight out of a Scorsese film. Like when Gianluca Mancini came face to face with a co-worker who had just arrived at Roma with Daniele De Rossi.
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“He greeted me in a strange way,” Mancini recounted, “after a couple of days he told me he couldn’t stand me. He even told me ‘Look, I can’t stand you to you. Last year if I saw you around Rome I would run you over with the car.’ Then, a week later, he apologized: he had completely changed his mind about me.”
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It is the most surreal anecdote to emerge from an interview Mancini gave to TvPlay with Enrico Camelio and Emiliano Viviano who caught up with him in Trigoria, but also one of the most revealing. Because it tells how much the “old” Mancini has changed today. The one who used to turn on the field, rant, get himself expelled. Now, however, he tells all with irony and self-awareness. “I’m trying to improve.”
To Ranieri, his current coach, he cracked a joke that says more than a thousand tactical meetings: “When he saw me as an opponent, he hated me.” A joking way of acknowledging that in the past Gianluca was not exactly the ideal companion for a quiet game. “I used to get too many cards, unnecessary protests. I used to hurt myself.”
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The turning point came with De Rossi. It was he who started a maturation process that today leads Mancini to handle even relations with referees with lucidity. “Now it’s different. I don’t take too many expulsions, because I don’t make bad entries. With Orsato, in the Coppa Italia, I made a lot of mistakes. I took three days, but I apologized.”
Lecce-Napoli 0-1: Raspadori tiene in vetta gli azzurri (Ansa Foto) – SerieAnews
Between players and managers, Mancini declares himself neutral. “I execute, even if they ask me for a header to the wall. With De Rossi we used to do 40 minutes of exits from the bottom, with Mourinho the defensive phase was manic. Every coach has his own idea.” What if he were to change countries? “England would be my dream. But in Italy, every Sunday at the Olimpico, it feels like a final.”
Mancini is now a leader at Roma and has been a market man several times, and he is perfectly comfortable in the three-man defense. “With Fonseca I played midfielder, but it was an emergency. Now I wouldn’t be able to. The armband role comes naturally to me.”
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Also with the help of a now almost “former” Mats Hummels, who impressed him not only with his career, but with how he still tackles matches. “Against Kulusevski he made a perfect slide and got back up like nothing happened. I told him he was crazy. I would have been given seven reds!”
Inter-Verona 1-0: nerazzurri di rigore (Ansa Foto) – SerieAnews
And speaking of cards: Mancini also stood up for the German over the expulsion in Bilbao, which he believes was unfair. “For me it was yellow. The problem is that if a striker misses a goal, he has other opportunities. The defender, on the other hand, risks big with every intervention.”
Questo articolo Serie A 35ma giornata, i risultati: Napoli ed Inter, che botta e risposta è comparso nella sua versione originale, prima sul sito SerieANews.
