There was never going to be room for all of them. Not after all the tension that played out behind the scenes and in the press over the past few months, not after the increasingly public disagreements between Claudio Ranieri and Gian Piero Gasperini, and not after Gian Piero Gasperini practically spent the last month telling anyone willing to listen that Roma could no longer afford those “misunderstandings” behind the scenes. Now, after weeks of smoke surrounding Trigoria, the fire has finally arrived
in full force: just a few weeks after Claudio Ranieri was shown the door, Frederic Massara is now reportedly also on his way out of the club, with multiple outlets confirming the sporting director will depart the club at the beginning of June.
It’s as simple as this: Gasperini won the battle. Three power centers entered Roma’s new era last summer. Ranieri was the institutional figure, Massara was the market operator, and Gasperini was the tactical revolutionary, but the Friedkins have now made their choice abundantly clear: this project belongs to Gasperini.
Frankly, given Gasperini’s tactical style and temperament, this was always going to end this way. You don’t bring in the most demanding system coach Italian football has produced over the last decade and then ask him to compromise on squad construction. Gasperini’s entire career has been built on control over profiles, physicality, tactical intelligence, and absolute buy-in to his methods. At Atalanta, he transformed overlooked players and players from little-known leagues into elite performers because the entire structure of the club moved in alignment with his vision. If there’s a diagnosis to make of the 2025/2026 Roma season, it’s that the club tried to split authority between too many competing voices, and the result was predictable: confusion, leaks, friction, and a squad that often looked caught between ideas.
The signs were there for weeks; Gasperini admitted that he and Massara did not always share “understanding” on football matters, while reports continued to emerge linking Roma with sporting directors more philosophically aligned with the manager’s approach. In reality, the writing was on the wall the moment the Friedkins backed Gasperini during the Ranieri fallout. Once that decision was made, Massara’s position became untenable.
Massara walks away from his third stint with the Giallorossi with a good number of accomplishments, despite the likely fifth place finish this year. Some of Roma’s better moves over the last year, including the superb signing of Donyell Malen, came under his watch, and he deserves credit for helping stabilize a chaotic situation after the club’s previous sporting structure imploded (gee, this happens kind of frequently with Roma, huh). Still, modern football clubs rarely survive prolonged power struggles between coach and sporting director, and especially not when the coach in question is Gasperini, a manager who has repeatedly shown he can elevate clubs beyond their natural ceiling when fully empowered.
For Gasperini, there are no more excuses, no more reasons to blame another big name in the club hierarchy, and no more ambiguity who owns all the wins and losses, for better and for worse. Roma have cleared the runway entirely for Gasperini, and when transfer rumors emerge for this summer (they already have, of course), this squad will increasingly become his squad; there won’t be any more room for quibbling over who is signed if regardless of who comes in as a new DS, they are Gasperini’s man. If the football carries his fingerprints completely, for better or worse, Roma will rise or fall given his plans.
If this reset works, Roma may finally escape the endless cycle they’ve been trapped in for years: half-measures, contradictory visions, disconnected transfer windows, and managers forced to adapt to rosters never truly built for them. Gasperini was brought here specifically because of his ability to take imperfect pieces and mold them into something greater than the sum of their parts. Roma did not hire him to maintain the status quo. They hired him to fundamentally reshape the club.
I can’t say that I wanted this to go down the way it did; I love Claudio Ranieri, for starters. Still, with this “fresh start,” the excuses are gone, and we’re getting the full, unadulterated Gian Piero Gasperini experience. Let’s hope it pans out, because I don’t want to go through another season of finger-pointing.
