Francesco Totti’s long estrangement from Luciano Spalletti is beginning to give way to something more measured: not a full reconciliation, but a relationship rebuilt through small encounters, public work and an eventual willingness to confront the past. In extracts from his autobiography Oltre, now published by Cairo Editore, Roma’s former captain retraces the silence that followed his final match in 2017 and the gradual thaw with the Italy coach.
Key takeaways
- Totti and Spalletti had no contact for more than six years after Totti’s retirement on 28 May 2017.
- Their first meeting after the break came during an Italy delegation’s visit to Rome’s Bambino Gesù children’s hospital in November 2023.
- A brief exchange at the 2025 Coppa Italia final showed that the distance between them had not yet disappeared.
- Two Amaro Montenegro advertising shoots helped create a more relaxed atmosphere between the former Roma coach and captain.
- Totti says a lasting peace will depend on both men speaking openly about what happened at Roma.
From silence to a first embrace
Totti describes the split as a matter known well beyond the two protagonists, but he concentrates on what followed. Once his playing career ended in 2017, he and Spalletti went their separate ways. For over six years, there were neither meetings nor telephone calls, with neither man appearing to seek the other out.
The first change arrived in November 2023, before Italy’s match against North Macedonia in Rome. Totti was contacted by his longtime friend Vito Scala and asked to join members of the national-team delegation at Bambino Gesù, the paediatric hospital which Totti occasionally visits privately to meet young patients.
The visitors were to include Italian Football Federation president Gabriele Gravina, Gianluigi Buffon, Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Angelo Peruzzi and Spalletti, then Italy’s head coach. Totti’s initial answer was a firm refusal. He eventually reconsidered, feeling that private pain should not stand in the way of an occasion centred on children.
He arrived at the hospital before Spalletti, riding his scooter and wearing a leather jacket, while the coach appeared in a dark suit. Gravina introduced them and Spalletti sought to lighten the moment, asking whether he could offer an embrace “from the heart”. They exchanged a quick high-five and a hug.
Totti does not romanticise that first contact. It was brief, he recalls, and did not immediately alter the underlying feelings. There was no sudden emotional release, only the ending of a long period in which the two had remained entirely apart.
They crossed paths again at the Stadio Olimpico on 14 May 2025, when Bologna beat Milan in the Coppa Italia final. Their conversation amounted to ordinary greetings and polite questions about one another’s wellbeing before they again went their separate ways.
Advertising work and an unfinished conversation
The more substantial opening came when Damiano Biondi approached Totti about appearing in an Amaro Montenegro commercial. Totti liked the proposal until he learned that Spalletti had been suggested as his co-star. He initially said he could not do it, insisting that he would greet Spalletti out of courtesy but did not feel able to work alongside him.
Yet the offer stayed with him. After a month of hesitation, Totti accepted. The first shoot took place early in the morning in the Roman area known as I Ponti. The two men had separate trailers, but Totti walked to Spalletti’s and knocked on the door with a teasing challenge: “Open up — are you afraid?”
When Spalletti came out, they hugged again, this time in a warmer manner than at the hospital. Spalletti asked whether Totti was pleased to be filming with him, and the former forward answered with a joke: he had been waiting for it, and the coach should thank him because the campaign would not have taken Spalletti without Totti’s approval.
Rome’s memory of the pair’s difficult final months together surfaced during a break in filming. An elderly woman called down from a balcony to warn Spalletti not to play with “the captain”, telling him that Totti belonged to the city and that its supporters had not forgotten. Totti turned it into another joke, warning the coach that things could become troublesome if local tempers were stirred.
They worked together for two days, and Totti says the shared time helped remove some of the tension. The smiles became natural rather than arranged for the cameras, and he left the experience feeling calmer.
A second commercial was filmed in the summer of 2026 over three days at Spalletti’s Tuscan estate. One evening, while dining with others, Totti said that Spalletti had been among the strongest coaches he had worked under, while adding that the coach had not treated him particularly well.
Spalletti responded that the responsibility was Totti’s, saying the former captain had wanted him gone and had driven him out of Roma. Totti rejected that version, replying that Spalletti had done it himself. The dispute was not resolved over dinner, but Totti felt the tone was markedly friendlier than before.
For Totti, the process remains incomplete. Each meeting has cleared away some of the resentment, but he believes the final step requires an honest account from both sides. Only then, he says, will he be able to put the story behind him completely and perhaps recover the relationship they had before Roma’s final, painful chapter together.
