De Paoli on Colón exit: ‘I’m not resigning, Prez offered one more game’ | OneFootball

In an interview with Mundo Ascenso, Rodolfo De Paoli detailed how his departure from the Santa Fe club unfolded and the internal boardroom conflict that sped up his exit. The coach was blunt about his separation: “I left Colón without resigning, and after my last match I didn’t give a press conference. The President and Vice President wanted to give me one more game, but the others didn’t.”

Regarding that end of his spell, De Paoli recalled that his relationship with the club’s leadership remained cordial despite the decision: “I told them, ‘I’m very grateful for the opportunity you gave me,’ because I’m at peace, because they acted in good faith; they never really knew why they gave me the chance in the first place.”

The coach described the hostile atmosphere after the defeat against the Adrogué side: “The last match was against Vivaldo’s Brown de Adrogué, who won 2–0, and the stadium was like a pressure cooker.” Faced with that situation, he decided to protect his players: “I asked Javier Toledo, Paolo Goltz, and Cristian Bernardi, and I told them: ‘I’m not going to speak to the press, and I don’t want to put you in a difficult position. Say whatever you feel you have to say, but I don’t want to go.’”

De Paoli also defended his spell in charge with statistics compared to the previous run: “That team had won one of its last 11 matches under Iván Delfino. We came in and had already won two out of four games.” He also highlighted the public support he received from the squad’s senior figures: “Toledo and Goltz went to the press conference and said, ‘How is the coach supposed to leave here?’ and they backed the manager. It’s not very common for players to publicly back the coach.”

Finally, he reflected on how he is perceived in the dressing room: “At none of the clubs I managed did I get the nickname ‘commentator.’ I may have millions of flaws, but they see you as just another footballer because they realize I was a footballer like them.”

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.