Kostas Manolas says Francesco Totti convinced him to renew his Roma contract, describing the former captain as a brother and insisting he should still have a role at the club.
In a lengthy interview with Betarades, the Greek defender revisited his five years in the capital, the transfers that never happened and the extraordinary night his header eliminated Barcelona from the Champions League.
He also spoke candidly about Luciano Spalletti, his decision to join Napoli and his belief that Roma would have reached the 2018 Champions League final had VAR been available.
“Totti welcomed me as if I were his son”
Manolas reserved his warmest words for Totti, praising both his talent and the way he treated teammates.
“He is the best person, the most humble. I cannot say a single negative word about him. Before being a footballer, he is a man. He welcomed me as if I were his son. That is why we have always been so close. Even today, we speak on the phone.
“He knew what to do with the ball an hour before it reached him. There was an enormous difference between him and all of us, technically and mentally.”
That relationship proved decisive when Manolas was considering his future.
“Totti helped me, that’s true. Without him, if he hadn’t influenced and convinced me, I would not have renewed. He took me aside and asked me to do it for him. He was like a brother to me and I couldn’t say no. He had treated me too well.”
Manolas described a captain whose authority came naturally.
“He was a captain who mainly tried to make you feel comfortable. He wasn’t someone who walked into the dressing room to frighten you or bare his teeth.
“During a match he could get angry, perhaps if you misplaced a pass he would start swearing, but he wasn’t that kind of captain in the dressing room. His personality came through without shouting or intimidating you.”
Manolas believes Totti should be inside Roma
The defender argued that Totti’s association with the club should extend beyond his playing career.
“This man should be inside Roma. It is impossible that Totti is outside Roma. I think they pushed him aside a little and he couldn’t bear it.
“If I were the president of a club and had Totti, someone who stayed at the same club for 25 years and turned down Real Madrid, I would keep him for life. In whatever role he wanted.”
His comments come after Fenerbahce denied reports linking Totti with a sporting advisory position.
Recalling Totti’s final appearance, Manolas said he shared the emotion of the occasion and believed his teammate still wanted to play.
“I was crying too. I couldn’t do anything else. I had been around him in those final days and saw how he was dealing with the situation.
“He didn’t want to stop. It was the club that made him stop. The club, the coach, Spalletti… Totti wanted to keep playing.
“In my opinion, he still had something to offer. Perhaps he was no longer in the best physical condition, but even towards the end he would come on and score. In those 15, 20 or 30 minutes, he always managed to do something, an assist or a goal.”
Spalletti praise—and criticism over Arsenal move
Manolas drew a sharp distinction between his assessment of Spalletti as a coach and his experience of their personal relationship.
“He is a very, very, very good coach. As a person, though, he is difficult. In my opinion, he doesn’t treat players correctly.
“But as a coach he is one of the best I have ever had, if not the best. I tell the truth. Just because he didn’t treat me well, I cannot say he was a bad coach. He was a great coach. If I said otherwise, I would be lying.”
He also claimed Spalletti prevented a transfer to Arsenal.
“It was Spalletti who blocked my move to Arsenal, you should know that. He said that if I left, he would leave too. And from that day he made my life impossible.”
Arsenal were not the only English club interested, according to Manolas.
“Lots of things were written. I had concrete, written interest from Arsenal and then Chelsea.
“My agent, Giannis Evangelopoulos, was about to board a plane to speak with Chelsea because they had called him about me. He had been told about Conte’s interest.”
Why the Zenit transfer collapsed
Manolas recalled the substantial financial package offered by Zenit, saying he could have earned around €40 million net over four years when the signing payment and potential bonuses were included.
The disagreement, he explained, concerned the currency in which the contract would be written.
“I arrived at the meeting and they told me the figures in the contract would be written in roubles. They explained that the rouble could rise or fall by as much as 20%.
“I told them I wanted the amounts in euros. They replied that it wasn’t possible, that I was the only player asking for it.
“I told them that if I left that meeting, I would not come back, because I am superstitious. They told me to leave.
“When I was home, they called and said they had agreed to put everything in euros. But I replied that it was too late.”
He claimed Roma initially reacted angrily to the collapse of the move.
“When I returned, they told me I would no longer play and would no longer do anything. I replied that there was no problem, that we would have a coffee and eventually see who would play.”
Staying ultimately allowed him to experience the defining moment of his Roma career.
“That was the season I scored against Barcelona. You see? Not every bad thing turns out badly. That is what stayed in history.
“What money? I could have earned €10 million in a year, but instead I stayed at Roma for less than a third of that. What I did is worth ten times as much to me.”
“I didn’t believe we could beat Barcelona 3–0”
Despite scoring the decisive goal, Manolas admitted he had been the sceptic among teammates discussing a comeback from the 4–1 first-leg defeat.
“We were sitting at a table. De Rossi, Kolarov, Džeko, Pellegrini and others were there. They were saying we would turn it around, that we would win 3–0.
“I looked at them and said: ‘You’re completely crazy! How are we going to win 3–0? Do you really think we won’t concede a single goal against them?’
“I didn’t believe it at all. I cannot tell you I believed, because it isn’t true. Pellegrini has said it too: the only one who didn’t believe we would turn it around was the one who ended up scoring the goal.”
His outlook changed as the game progressed. Before the decisive corner, he recalled telling Federico Fazio that one of them was about to score.
“A corner came and I felt something inside me. I said to Fazio: ‘Now we’re going to score, either me or you. I’m telling you, we’re scoring now.’
“I very rarely attacked the near post. But I had seen Ünder in training and knew he often hit the ball hard without getting it past the first man. So I went to the near post.
“I headed it, the ball did what it had to do and went in. I don’t even know how to explain it.”
The moment the achievement sank in
Manolas said he initially struggled to process the scale of what had happened.
“Everyone was celebrating. I went inside and locked myself in a bathroom. Messages, messages, messages—chaos. My phone seemed to be on fire.
“I was incredibly happy, but I didn’t realise what I had done. I understood when I saw the Roma supporters waiting for us, the love they gave me. That was when I realised I had done something enormous.”
The first person he called was his father.
“He was emotional too. He congratulated me. Usually he always told me to forget it, that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t work hard enough. After that goal, he congratulated me.”
Why Manolas left for Napoli
Reflecting on his eventual departure, Manolas said impatience and doubts about Roma’s ability to take the next step influenced his decision.
“I had no patience. My cycle at Roma had ended. Five years, and I could see that the team couldn’t take that extra step to really compete.
“We had tried to win the league, but we lost it to Juventus, who were incredibly strong then. They were like Olympiacos in Greece, very difficult to face.
“At that moment, I saw Napoli as a team with higher footballing standards than Roma. I didn’t want to leave Italy. In previous years I had received offers from Juventus, but not that year. So I decided to go to Napoli.”
He said Mino Raiola had urged him to wait for a possible Manchester United move.
“Mino Raiola wanted to take me to England. He told me not to rush into going to Napoli, that he would take me to Manchester United. But I have never had patience.”
Manolas also attributed part of the transfer to Roma’s financial position.
“Roma needed that money. They had an enormous problem with financial fair play. They needed to bring it in. In the end, they convinced me and I went to Napoli.”
“With VAR, we would have reached the final”
Returning to the 2018 Champions League campaign, Manolas was unsparing about his own performance in the first leg against Liverpool.
“We were very poor. And I was very poor too. I can tell you that was one of my worst Champions League games. I was really terrible.”
But he believes refereeing decisions in the return leg prevented Roma from completing another comeback.
“El Shaarawy shoots and Alexander-Arnold stops the ball with his hand before it goes into the goal. It’s a penalty and a sending-off. We could have made it 3–2 in the 55th minute and turned the match around.
“Then there is another incident: a penalty we aren’t given because of an offside that doesn’t exist. There is no offside.
“If VAR had been there, we would have reached the final. We had come back against Barcelona and we would have come back against Liverpool too.”
Source: Kostas Manolas’s interview with Betarades
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