"It's arrived for me too, a day I hoped would never come."
Francesco Totti could barely hold back the tears as he prepared to read a farewell note that he had written with his wife, TV presenter Ilary Blasi. With his three children and his teammates by his side, many sobbing uncontrollably, they waited for a man who'd given his life and considerable talent to his boyhood team to say his final goodbye. Fans openly wept as they waited to hear from their captain.
Roma's injury time dart into the Champions League was merely the preamble for this: Roma's greatest player leaving the Stadio Olimpico one final time, his words, for once, doing the talking rather than his artistic feet.
"I'm scared."
"It's not the kind of fear that you have when you have to take a penalty," Totti said. "This time I can't see through the net and what comes afterwards."
After 25 years in the same shirt and the best part of two decades as captain, no one, least of all Totti, knows for certain what he will do next. A director's role working alongside sporting director Monchi awaits, but no one is convinced that he wants it. He wants to do what he has always done: play. Zdenek Zeman, probably the coach Totti was closest to, called his Roma retirement player a "tragedy" and suggested that he look to play elsewhere while he still has the desire. Professional football is not a hole that is easily filled, least of all for someone so adored.
Totti began the day he dreaded the most in front of the Curva Sud, lapping up the applause and special prematch display from Roma's hardcore support. "Totti is Roma," read the message. All of the prematch singing was for Totti, and for him, the stadium was fuller than it had been for as long as anyone could remember. Outside TV crews from around the world prowled for fans to offer their feelings on their captain's passing. Rome-based sports daily Corriere Dello Sport put up a truly awful, papier mâché-looking statue of Totti.
Inside the ground, the atmosphere was perplexing. When Gianluigi Buffon popped up on the big screen to honour his friend, fans booed so loudly that you couldn't hear him speak over the PA. After the team was read out and that one last roar of "Totti!" was extinguished, the entire ground booed coach Luciano Spalletti, despite Roma's going into the match looking to establish a club record points total, just because he dared to bench a 40-year-old. Afterward, when president James Pallotta handed Totti a commemorative shirt, the crowd heckled him too. The match, and Roma as a team, became a side show; it almost cost the club tens of millions of euros.
Roma went into Serie A's final weekend in second place and in possession of the last automatic Champions League qualification spot, a point ahead of swashbuckling Napoli. The money that tournament brings is crucial to Roma's balance sheet and transfer activity, but with Genoa having saved themselves from relegation the previous week, no one really thought they would bother to pose Roma much threat.
Just three minutes had gone when Genoa attacker Pietro Pellegri, who was born just three months before Totti fired Roma to their last Scudetto in 2001, raced onto a speculative heavy from the back that somehow eluded the dozing Roma defence, calmly slotting the ball under Wojciech Szczesny. The Stadio Olimpico went stony silent as the 200 Genoa fans boxed in at the back of the posh Tribuna Monte Mario celebrated wildly with a few of their friends from Napoli, who had travelled to Rome as part of the long-standing gemellagio (or "twinning") between both sets of supporters.
All of a sudden, Roma had to mount a comeback, and when in the 10th minute Edin Dzeko bundled in his 29th league goal of the season, which would eventually secure him top scorer status ahead of Dries Mertens, things started to settle down. After chesting down Kevin Strootman's chipped pass and thwacking the post, he was the first to react to the rebound and used his torso to score a goal that took him to 39 in all competitions.
Dzeko has managed the most goals ever by a Serie A player in a single season, not that the supporters seemed ready to thank the Bosnian. By the end of the afternoon, he had added two assists to his equaliser, but he was given terrible abuse by fans after missing two great opportunities later in the first half. First Kevin Strootman slipped him clean through on 19 minutes, only for the former Manchester City man to duff a weak shot at Eugenio Lamanna. Then, five minutes before the break, he failed to get a proper touch on the Dutchman's cross just yards from an empty net five minutes before the break. The worst miss of the lot, however, belonged to Stephan El Shaarawy, who raced onto yet another wonderful pass from the immense Strootman and scuffed wide his one-on-one with Lamanna.
Locked at 1-1 with 35 minutes left, Totti got his one last chance to save the day. But while his arrival galvanised a nervous crowd, his replacement for Mohamed Salah did little for Roma's overall play. When Roma did finally take the lead, it looked like a symbolic moment -- "Future Captain" Daniele De Rossi lashing home Dzeko's smart cut back and racing toward the Curva Sud -- but in truth, De Rossi has been de facto captain for some time, and in any case, Darko Lazovic, who had set up Pellegri's opener, nodded home from inches out soon after. With 11 minutes left, it looked like Totti's goodbye would be ruined. The atmosphere in the stands quickly darkened, and the away fans were soon escorted out as insults flew.
With five minutes left, Totti had his moment. Running on to Dzeko's knockdown, he loaded his right foot, ready to smack the winner home just like old times, and only seconds after Wojciech Szczesny had desperately tipped Lazovic's shot onto the post. But just as the Olimpico took a sharp intake of breath, Santiago Gentiletti hung out a leg and denied Totti his Hollywood finish. That, rather than De Rossi's goal, was the truly symbolic moment: instead of Totti, it was Roma's current crop who saved the day.
A hopeful punt from Naiggolan found Federico Fazio, who lobbed an equally hopeful header to Dzeko. The striker held off the humbug Gentiletti and nodded down to Diego Perotti, who couldn't (and didn't) miss from 6 yards out. Perotti wheeled away to the stands, shirt off and delirious with joy, with his teammates following quickly behind him. Fans charged down the aisles to celebrate with their team. The arguments enveloping the press box just seconds before turned into hugs and shouts of delight. Afterward, the Argentina international described it as the "most important day of my career."
"[Totti] was a symbol for this city," Perotti said. "Even for us, having a player like that by our side made us calmer. It'll be harder for us now."
There's little doubt it will be even harder for him.