Roma grapple with Totti dilemma
Francesco Totti is such a big part of AS Roma that Rudi Garcia, the club's coach at the time, wondered whether the talismanic playmaker was more important to the city than the Pope.
Playing his 24th season at his only professional club, where he has scored 300 competitive goals, Totti seemed to feel that he would be allowed to carry on playing as long as he wanted.
The 39-year-old predicted last month that he would continue playing for another two years but recent events suggest he has become an awkward presence for coach Luciano Spalletti and raised the question of whether he is bigger than the club.
Totti, who has played under 16 different coaches at Roma, complained in a television interview on Saturday about his lack of playing time.
In response, the forward was left out of the squad for Sunday's game against Palermo.
Totti was greeted with applause while Spalletti was jeered but, away from the Stadio Olimpico, opinions were almost equally divided.
In an online survey by La Repubblica, 47 per cent of those taking part said Totti was right and 50 per cent sided with Spalletti.
"If I were Totti, I would have stopped playing last year when I was still decisive and an integral part of the team," said former Italy striker Gianluca Vialli in a programme on Foxsports Italia.
Former Italy coach Cesare Prandelli sympathised with Spalletti.
"I understand perfectly the decision of the coach," he wrote in a column for the website Calciomercato.com
"You can be the most important player, the captain, but certain types of behaviour are not acceptable."
Meanwhile, his AS Roma teammates showed they could do perfectly well without him, hammering Palermo 5-0 on Sunday for their fifth successive Serie A win.
