Ciao, Cesco
After 25 years at Roma, Totti is swapping one box for another
It turns out that Francesco Totti does not have the secret to eternal youth. It has been announced by AS Roma that the player who has been around for what seems an eternity will no longer grace the pitches of the Eternal City or beyond after this season. After 25 years he will be hanging up his boots, swapping the Stadio Olimpico penalty box for the directors box. The statement released Thursday indicated that their erstwhile captain – he first pulled on the armband at age 22 in 1998 becoming the youngest captain in league history – will end his career when Roma host Genoa on May 28.
It had been anticipated that the 40-year-old would retire last summer, but he signed a contract for one more year and added 25 appearances this season to extend his Roma record to 783 games, in which he has scored 307 goals. Both of those are records for the clubs and even though he has been deployed mostly from the bench this season, don’t put it past Totti to add to either before his time is up.
Growing up Roma
Totti joined his hometown side in 1989 but it was only in 1992 that he first pulled on the famous maroon shirt in anger when he made his debut at the age of 16 at the end of the 1993-94 season. He scored his first goal at the start of the next season and then played his way into the side full time. Totti almost left for Sampdoria on loan in 1997 – a real Sliding Doors moment – but the move was blocked. The next season he was given the No.10 shirt that he has worn ever since.
Nike, his boot sponsor, marked the most recent Rome derby with the release of a limited edition boot – 100 pairs for each of the years he has represented his hometown club. The boots didn’t help Totti on the pitch – Lazio won – but they ensured he went out in style in what would become his last Derby della Capitale. Fittingly, the boots were gold: a perfect match for a champion.
Totti won the Serie A title in 2000-01 with Roma – the club’s third – and an honor that was no doubt made all the sweeter by wresting the championship from their crosstown rivals Lazio, who had won the previous season. The win also took Roma one ahead of their hated Biancocelesti counterparts in total championships – three to Lazio’s two – a record that stands to this day.
World champion
But his is not a career defined on the local stage, whatever the merits of bragging rights are in Roman soccer. He transcended the divide – and the hotbed of Italian soccer – by achieving glory for the Azzurri, lifting the World Cup for Italy in 2006. That was the last of his 58 caps for Italy as he retired from international soccer after the final, assured that he was going out at the top of the world. That he doesn’t have more than one Scudetto, two Coppa Italia titles and two Supercoppa Italiana medals to keep his World Cup winner’s medal company is one of the game’s injustices. He could have won so much more: A finalist with Italy at Euro 2000, eight times runner-up in Serie A, five times the beaten finalist in the Coppa Italia and three times on the losing side in the Supercoppa Italiana.
Great of the game
Totti might only have finished fifth in the Ballon d’Or but to soccer fans in Rome – or half of them, at least – Totti is a god. He has plenty of individual honors and records to console himself with, and unlike the two current players deemed to be the best on the planet, he has won the World Cup. However you look at it, this is a true great of the game whom even Lazio fans can now start to admire. They might also rue what might have been, given that Totti almost went to Lazio as a child before a coach stepped in and said Roma.
He was adored by Roma’s fans not just because of the goals – not to mention the selfie celebration against Lazio – but because he was one of their own. To have some idea of what Totti means to his adoring public, it’s worth considering his nicknames: the Golden Boy, the King of Rome, and the Gladiator. Even those whose teams suffered at the expense of Totti’s exploits could find much to like about Totti the man thanks to his charity work, including a series of joke books that made light of a reputation for not being the sharpest off the pitch. But boy was he sharp on it.