De Paoli on Colón: ‘I’m leaving, not resigning; 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 leadership dispute that sped up his exit. The coach was blunt about his separation: “I left Colón without resigning, and in my last match I didn’t give a press conference. The president and vice president wanted to give me one more game, and the others didn’t.”

Regarding that end of his stint, De Paoli recalled that his relationship with the club’s leadership remained cordial despite the decision: “I told them, ‘I care about you a lot 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 opportunity.”

The coach described the hostile atmosphere after the loss to the Adrogué side: “The last match was against Vivaldo’s Brown de Adrogué, who won 2-0, and the stadium was a pressure cooker.” Given the 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 have to say, but I don’t want to leave.’”

De Paoli also defended his tenure with statistics compared to the previous run: “That team, in the last 11 matches under Iván Delfino, had won one. We came in and in four matches we had already won two.” He also highlighted the public support he received from the squad’s leaders: “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 locker room: “At no club I managed did I ever have the nickname of 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.