The Roman Report — 5 October 2026 – 11 October 2026

There is a sentence in Gian Piero Gasperini's public remarks this week that deserves to sit with you for a moment. Speaking from a vineyard in Asti — because of course he was, this is Italian football and its coaches grow wine and philosophise between fixtures — he described his ambition to draw the Friedkin family closer to the club ahead of the centenary, not for his own sake, he was careful to say, but for them and for the supporters. It was a small remark buried inside a longer interview, but it spoke volumes about where Roma are and where they are heading. A manager who has already won the supporters' hearts — he called that the great success of his first season, not the third-place finish, not the Champions League qualification — now wants the owners to feel what it means to belong to this club in the way that only proximity can teach. The appointment of Galantic has helped. The centenary in 2027 looms. There is a new stadium on the horizon, an Under-23 project in embryonic form, a youth pathway being constructed brick by brick. This is not a club lurching from crisis to crisis anymore. It feels, for the first time in a long while, like a club with a plan.

The plan has a central pillar, and his name is Manu Koné. The revelation this week that Chelsea had moved late in the summer window to prize the Frenchman away from Trigoria — with Arsenal and Manchester United also circling — tells you everything about how far Koné has come since arriving on loan with obligation from Borussia Mönchengladbach two summers ago. Gasperini was unequivocal: the deal was impossible in the timeframe, yes, but he also made clear it was not a sale he wanted to make under any circumstances. His reasoning carries the ring of a man who knows exactly what he has. A brace against Inter. Consistent, commanding performances in the engine room. Now a France call-up, arriving back to Trigoria on Wednesday as one of the last internationals to return. The timing questions alone — contracts, people, logistics — gave Gasperini his practical argument. But listen to what he actually said: he is happy it went this way. He will have the chance to increase his value further. That is not a manager managing a difficult situation. That is a manager who won an argument and is enjoying being right about it.

The week also brought one of those moments that reminds you why football, at its best, is still something ancient and emotional beneath all the transfer arithmetic and tactical diagrams. Matías Soulé pulled on the white and pale blue of Argentina for the first time at the Monumental, coming off the bench in a 7-0 victory over Burkina Faso, and the social media post he wrote afterwards had the honest, unguarded quality of something genuinely felt. "A dream I've had since childhood," he wrote, and you believed every word of it. His Roma teammate Santiago Castro debuted in the same match, and Leonardo Balerdi — another Giallorosso, another Argentine — was there to wrap an arm around his little brother and share the moment. Three Roma players in the Albiceleste story on a single afternoon. Gasperini, characteristically, framed Soulé's achievement as a reward for the whole squad, which is exactly the kind of thing a great manager says. He also mentioned, without fuss, that Soulé had arrived at pre-season overweight after his injury struggles and has fought his way back to the high level he now shows. That journey — from pubalgia and excess weight to an international debut — is the Soulé story nobody tells often enough.

And then there is Endrick. Multiple sources this week converge on the same outline: Real Madrid will not sell permanently, Roma are in pole position for a loan, the player himself has reportedly given his word to Gasperini, and sporting director D'Amico has been working the phones throughout the international break. The detail that most arrests me is the specific moment the story identifies for face-to-face talks: Roma host Real Madrid at the Stadio Olimpico on 14 October in the Champions League, and the arrival of Madrid's hierarchy in the capital creates an opening for D'Amico to sit across a table and push things forward. There is something almost cinematic about the idea — conducting transfer negotiations in the margins of one of the great nights European football offers. Gasperini is clearly a believer, though he has been careful not to overstate the urgency publicly, noting only that the striker role is one his squad lacks without pretending they are playing with ten men. AC Milan are real competition. The structure of any deal remains unsettled. But Roma in pole position for a player of Endrick's potential and profile is not nothing. It is, in fact, a statement.

Bryan Cristante's absence hangs over the short term. Gasperini will not be rushed — "we will not be willing to risk anything" was the phrase he used, and the lateral knee ligament issue means Como and potentially Real Madrid are likely beyond him — and in de Roon, the quiet, authoritative Dutchman who Gasperini relied on so heavily at Atalanta, there is a ready-made replacement who looks increasingly likely to start on Sunday. The match at Como at half past noon carries more weight than a midday kickoff usually does. Gasperini's exchange with Fabregas has already taken on its own life — the Subbuteo quip was perfectly delivered, the warmth of the jousting masking a genuine tactical contest between two of the most interesting coaches in Serie A. The radio voices this week were split on whether Como or Real Madrid represents the harder test, and at least one pundit was willing to go on record backing the Italian league fixture as the more treacherous. There is something to that. And behind the immediate fixture, bigger questions wait quietly: can Cristante return for Genoa? Can D'Amico advance the Endrick talks when Madrid come to Rome? Can Soulé, riding the wave of his international debut, now deliver the kind of first half he produced last October before the injuries came? This week gave Roma supporters much to savour. The next one promises even more.