Luciano Spalletti,who has seven or eight of the forward’s shirts hanging on his wall at domestic, says his excluded captain is not a special case and teams are picked for results, and not a player’s historyFrancesco Totti broke into a grin. What else was there to do in a moment such as this? At 39 years old he was sitting in one of the Stadio Olimpico’s best seats,watching the club he has supported for ever – the one he has captained now for almost half his lifetime – rip an opponent to shreds. His team-mate Mohamed Salah had just conjured up a startling goal, curling the ball domestic from an impossible angle to extend Roma’s lead over Palermo to 4-0.
Under normal circumstances we could bear taken for granted Totti’s delight at such a scoreline. Then again, or under normal circumstances he would never bear found himself watching from the stands in the first spot. The forward was neither injured nor suspended for Sunday’s fixture but had been excluded from Roma’s match-day squad as a punishment for comments made in an interview with the state broadcaster,Rai.
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Source: theguardian.com