Francesco Totti has revealed that one of his biggest regrets from his playing career was never getting the chance to play alongside Brazilian legend Ronaldo Nazário.
The former Roma captain made the revelation while discussing his career and new book in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport.
Asked which player he would have liked to share the pitch with, Totti said: “I really wanted to play alongside the ‘Alien’ Ronaldo. Imagine how much fun that would have been. With me behind him, he could have scored 400 or 500 goals. Even with his eyes closed.”
Totti also spoke about the greatest player in football history, naming Diego Maradona as his undisputed choice.
“Maradona is football, he is the ball—there’s no rival. Everyone else comes after.”
Reflecting on his ability to anticipate moves on the pitch, Totti credited some of his former teammates for understanding his ideas almost instinctively.
“Most of the time I read it correctly. But the players I worked with were also very intelligent, because they could understand what I was thinking a second before. I’m talking about Delvecchio, Perrotta, Cassano. The moment the ball came from a defender, they knew how I would move. That’s talent, and not everyone has it—in fact, no one has it completely. I say this objectively, because every player interprets the game differently, with different techniques and ideas, but I’ve never seen anyone else do the things I did.”