Claudio Ranieri takes one last pebble off his shoe.

The situation at Roma continues to hold sway, with Claudio Ranieri’s abrupt farewell and Gian Piero Gasperini’s statements on sporting director Frederic Massara still causing discussion. In a convulsive context, Ranieri himself wanted to try to bring closure to the matter once and for all, although he made a clarification that will not fail to arouse further controversy.

“The interruption of the senior advisor relationship was due to a unilateral determination of the club,” ‘Sir Claudio’, until yesterday senior advisor to Roma’s American ownership and now free of all commitments, told Ansa.” Ranieri stressed that he wanted to clarify this for “out of a duty of transparency, clarity of his actions, fidelity to the truth of the facts and love for the jersey that represents his second skin.”

The 1951-born coach, however, wanted to close by thanking the Friedkin family and the entire Giallorossi environment, with a special salute to the fans. Thus, Ranieri’s fourth spell at Roma comes to an end for good, after his time as a player (from the youth team up to the 1973-1974 season) and those as a coach first (from 2009 to 2011, in 2019 and in 2024-2025) and then as an executive, this season until yesterday.

Less than a year ago, at the press conference presenting coach Gian Piero Gasperini, Ranieri had drawn a very different picture of internal relations at the club. “My role will be to give Gasperini a hand, but I will be like a trusted friend. I told him on the first day that I disliked him in the past, but Roma needed a strong character like him to restart.” Words that today sound like a distant memory, reflecting how quickly relations within the Giallorossi club have deteriorated.