The Roman Report — 13 July 2026 – 19 July 2026

There is something about the first day of pre-season that never gets old, no matter how many times you have lived it. Daniele Ghilardi walking through the gates of Trigoria on Monday morning, stopping to sign autographs while supporters hollered "Make sure it's the Champions League!" — that image alone tells you everything you need to know about where this club stands and what this summer means. One by one they filed in: Pisilli surrounded by fans, Soulé and Wesley mobbed at the entrance, Mancini and Angeliño, Gollini and the rest, until Trigoria had the particular electric hum it only gets when a new season is genuinely beginning rather than merely arriving. Subscriber numbers have already hit record levels. The stands are not even painted yet for competitive football and Roman hearts are already racing. Gian Piero Gasperini was there to receive them all, and whatever else you want to say about this summer's transfer inactivity, the presence of that man overseeing proceedings lends every training session a weight of credibility it might otherwise lack.

The coach has been careful and measured in his public remarks this week, which is itself a kind of statement. On Rai Radio 1 he acknowledged that June was essentially a frozen month for everybody — the World Cup swallowed the market whole — but insisted that the real business begins now. He is right, of course, and Roma supporters should hold him to that optimism, because the squad that reported to Trigoria on Monday arrived without a single new face. El Shaarawy is gone. Ferguson, Zaragoza, Tsimikas — gone. Dybala's renewal, though the financial terms had been agreed for days, was only confirmed formally as the players were arriving, which rather captures the slightly breathless administrative atmosphere around the club right now. Pellegrini's situation is more drawn out still: he wants three years guaranteed, Roma are offering two plus an option, and his salary must come down significantly — all of this while he rehabilitates from injury. Çelik's renewal is essentially done in substance if not yet in announcement. None of this is catastrophic, but it does mean Gasperini is preparing for a Champions League campaign while his sporting director Tony D'Amico continues to chase signatures on existing contracts as well as new arrivals. Antonio Tempestilli, a man who knows this club deeply, put it bluntly when he told Il Tempo this week that Roma must accelerate, that three or four serious signings are needed, and that the season will not wait for anyone to get comfortable.

The most consequential subplot of the week, though, and the one that will define how much room D'Amico has to operate in the attacking positions Roma so badly needs to strengthen, is the Manu Koné situation. Let us not pretend Gasperini's words on radio were anything other than a gentle but unmistakable signal. When a head coach says that Roma "clearly has a need to balance its accounts" and that he "hopes arriving in the Champions League is enough," he is not speaking in riddles. Roma have set a €60 million asking price after rejecting Atlético Madrid's €40 million bid outright, and the Premier League clubs — Manchester United and Liverpool among them — are circling a player who has been extraordinary for France as they reached the World Cup semi-finals. The radio pundits on the Roman stations have torn into the implications all week. Francesca Ferrazza flagged her alarm. Lorenzo Pes argued that Gasperini knows Koné is his most sellable asset and that Roma need to drive the price up cleverly. Piero Torri did the arithmetic with characteristic precision: a €60 million sale generates a €50 million book gain and clears the settlement agreement that has been hanging over the club like a cloud. The numbers make a horrible kind of sense. Tempestilli urged Roma not to sell their best players every year for the sake of the accountants. I am with Tempestilli in spirit, but I fear the accountants may win this one.

What makes the Koné situation less terrifying than it might be is that Gasperini has made clear — in that direct, unambiguous way of his — that Malen is his central striker, not a winger, full stop. The coach was almost impatient about it: "Never for me! For me he must play in front of goal." That clarity of vision matters. It tells you that Gasperini arrives at Trigoria with a detailed picture in his head of how his team works, and that he is not going to allow international tournament deployments or market fashions to blur it. Meanwhile, the dual Chelsea operation that D'Amico is pursuing — Diego Moreira from Strasbourg on one side, Alejandro Garnacho from Chelsea itself on a loan with option on the other — represents the kind of creative network thinking that the Friedkin consortium's ownership of connected clubs was always supposed to enable. Garnacho is genuinely excited about this, apparently drawn by the prospect of linking up with Dybala, which is a sentence that would have sounded like fantasy a year ago and now appears to be a live negotiation. Moreira is more complicated: Strasbourg want €40 million, Roma have opened at €30 million, and that gap will need some goodwill from clubs that share ownership rather than genuine arm's-length bargaining. Matías Soulé, who struggled physically last season, looks increasingly likely to depart at around €35 million to help fund all of this, with Sunderland and Fulham both interested.

There is something else worth pausing on this week, something quieter but genuinely beautiful. Roma launched a project celebrating the club's tradition of Roman-born players — from Giovanni Degni touching the ball first in 1927, through Amadei and Di Bartolomei and Totti, through De Rossi's fifteen-year partnership alongside that golden number ten, right to Pellegrini carrying the torch today. No Italian club has roots embedded quite so deeply in its territory, and the timing feels right. Gasperini is building something at Trigoria, and the foundation beneath it has been laid across a century of Roman sons. The arrival of academy prospects Cherubini, Pagano, Reale and Mannini for the opening sessions is a small but meaningful reminder that this connection is never purely nostalgic — it is living and ongoing.

The first real test arrives on 26 July, when Roma travel to Cannes to face the Friedkin-owned French club at the Stade Pierre de Coubertin, before the squad heads to Wales for a high-intensity training camp running into August. By then, we should know considerably more about whether Koné stays or goes, whether Moreira and Garnacho are genuinely on their way, and whether Dybala's contract renewal — confirmed this week but barely celebrated — signals the beginning of the decisive acceleration Gasperini promised. A fresh Roma, a hungry coach, a city that is already dreaming of the Champions League nights to come. Let the real work begin.