Balerdi at Roma: The Confession of a Defender with a Midfielder's Heart

Leonardo Balerdi told Il Tempo something that sounded more like a confession than an answer: "I did not want to be a defender. I wanted to be a midfielder." Reading it, I remembered a morning in 2026 outside the fence of Shenzhen FC's training ground, where a young centre-back back-heeled a pass during a rondo and got shouted at by an assistant coach. He blushed, then did exactly the same thing the next session.

Balerdi's story at Roma begins right there: a player the world defines by a position on a diagram, who measures himself by something else. He talked about leaving Marseille after many years, about a Serie A dream dating back to childhood, about Gasperini, about the city of Rome. And in the middle of those polite answers, he dropped a line that made me stop: "Play well in two matches and you are a god, play badly in two and you are the devil."

Context: a source made only of people

The interview was conducted with Il Tempo, a long-established Rome daily, and relayed by Goal.com. The source contains almost nothing but the player's words: no transfer fee, no expected-goals figure, no specific match detail. For a beat writer, this is a document that is both easy and hard. Easy, because the person emerges clearly. Hard, because every professional conclusion has to carry its own caveat.

My 2026 stumble in front of a microphone did not silence me; it taught me to listen before writing. Listening to a defender talk about himself is like listening to a club talk about its season: what matters is often what someone chooses not to say.

What is certain from this source: Balerdi moved from Marseille to Roma, he says he wants to stay for a long time, and he is learning to live inside a football market far hotter than France's.

A defender with a midfielder's heart

The clearest thing Balerdi brings to Roma is precisely what he says he never wanted to be. A centre-back raised on a midfielder's skills is exactly the profile Gasperini's back three needs: someone who can hold the ball, escape pressure with one touch, then step into midfield so the team does not split into two disconnected blocks. The strongest fit between Balerdi and Gasperini lies in the ball-playing instinct of a midfielder pushed into defence, not in pure defensive ability.

The four names he cites as defensive references say a lot: Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Sergio Ramos, Virgil van Dijk. That is a group of front-foot defenders — men who step up, contest space ahead of them, and are comfortable on the ball under pressure. A centre-back who uses those four as his yardstick is placing himself inside a high-line system.

At the other end of his career, his idols are Fernando Gago, Juan Román Riquelme and Martín Palermo — a Boca Juniors trio. Two of them were midfield conductors. That choice explains why Balerdi says he did not want to be a defender: he grew up watching the men who organise games, then was pushed into a role that stops them.

His migration path is the familiar two-step model of South American football: formed in Argentina, moved to a second-tier big European league, then transferred to a more storied destination. Marseille was the stepping stone, Rome the step up. That an Argentine defender treats Serie A as a childhood dream shows the league's pull on South American players has not faded.

On Gasperini, Balerdi describes a full-control manager: "He comes to the training ground and does what he has to do." He says his physical condition improves day by day and that he feels strong in matches. That phrasing matches Gasperini's man-oriented pressing model, where training loads are front-loaded so the body can withstand match intensity. A goal is only the rest at the end of a long song sung by eleven people; most of that song is rehearsed on mornings nobody films.

A limit must be stated: all of the above is the player's self-report. There are no minutes played, no pressing metrics, no defensive expected goals, no recorded position. Whether he is deployed as an outside centre-back in a back three or as a pure deepest defender remains an inference.

What the interview actually reveals

The most telling part of the interview is not where Balerdi talks about himself, but where he talks about his manager. He mentions that the media altered the manager's words a little. A player rarely volunteers that unless there is a real incident that needs defusing. In the dressing room with no spectators, I heard a match that was never broadcast — and here, that match is a war of words between Gasperini and the Roman press.

The god-and-devil line works the same way. Skim it and it sounds like a complaint about fickle fans. Read it closely and it is expectation management: a new signing saying in advance that two good games do not define him, so that when two bad ones arrive, the "new arrival not yet settled" narrative already has a shelf to sit on. Based on my experience of following matches, players who talk about fan pressure early are usually those who have already tasted it at least once.

There is another paradox. Roma have just signed a centre-back from Ligue 1, where defenders tend to be judged on their ability to resist counter-attacks. Balerdi arrives with the opposite profile. If he succeeds, it is because Gasperini was right to spot a disguised midfielder inside a defender.

Signals to track

Three things are worth watching over the next ten matches. First, minutes and substitution timing: if Balerdi is repeatedly withdrawn around the 60th to 70th minute, his body has not yet reached the fitness ceiling Gasperini demands. Second, the tone of the Italian press after each match: two poor games in a row is the real test of the god-and-devil line. Third, contract talk — a promise to stay for a long time only counts when it turns into actual negotiation.

Balerdi says he wants a long stay in Rome. In Serie A, time is measured in results, not intentions. I write for those who stay in the dressing room after the stadium lights go out. He may be one of them — or he may be the next man with a floodlight pointed straight at his face after two matches.