Roma Boss Denies Blocking Manu Koné’s Chelsea Move Amid Club’s Financial Reality
Roma coach Gian Piero Gasperini disputes Chelsea’s Koné offer and explains how wage limits ended pursuits of Greenwood and Summerville.
Ginevra Cattaneo
Updated on 04 September 2026
Gian Piero Gasperini has pushed back on the narrative that he personally scuppered Chelsea’s move for Manu Koné, insisting Roma never received an official offer for the France international.
Sky Sport had reported that the Giallorossi rejected a €60m deadline-day bid from the Premier League club, a version of events Gasperini firmly disputes as ever reaching an official stage.
In the same interview, the Roma coach confirmed a second, previously untold story from the summer window: the club actively pursued Mason Greenwood and Crysencio Summerville, only to be blocked by wage-bill restrictions rather than a lack of ambition.
Two revelations, one theme: a Roma summer defined as much by financial ceilings as by transfer targets.
Gasperini’s Account Of What Happened With Manu Koné
Gasperini said the credit for supposedly blocking Koné’s move had been unfairly attributed to him.
He explained that until the match against Lecce, he had heard nothing about Chelsea’s interest, and that afterward there simply wasn’t time for negotiations before the deadline closed.
Roma, he maintained, never received an official offer for the midfielder, a claim that directly contradicts the version reported around Chelsea’s approach for Koné.
Manu Koné And The Timeline Of Chelsea’s Interest
Roma played Lecce the day before the summer transfer deadline, and Gasperini reiterated after that match that the club would not sell its best players.
It was only in the following twenty-four hours that Sky Sport’s report of Chelsea’s interest surfaced, leaving little room, in Gasperini’s telling, for any formal negotiation to develop before the window shut.
The coach’s account frames the entire saga as a compressed, last-minute episode rather than a drawn-out standoff he personally engineered.
The €60m Chelsea Bid And Gasperini’s Denial
The €60m figure attached to Chelsea’s supposed bid came from Sky Sport, not from Roma or Gasperini himself, and the coach was explicit that no official offer of any size ever landed on the club’s desk.
There is no confirmation from Roma of a formal fee, add-ons, or any player-inclusive structure.
The gap between media reporting and the coach’s own account remains the central tension of the story.
Why Roma’s Greenwood And Summerville Pursuits Fell Through
Gasperini confirmed that Roma tried to sign both Mason Greenwood and Crysencio Summerville during the summer, admitting that the pursuit of both players exposed the reality behind Roma’s finances.
He had believed in June that Champions League qualification money had eased the club’s problems, but the failed approaches for Greenwood and Summerville proved otherwise.
Wage-bill restrictions, he said, repeatedly forced Roma to walk away from players who were genuinely enthusiastic about joining the club.
Roma’s Summer Strategy Under UEFA Financial Restrictions
Roma reached a settlement agreement with UEFA and were fined in June for failing to meet financial requirements, a backdrop that shaped every decision made in the transfer market.
Despite the constraints, the club did not sell any of its top players, instead bringing in Santiago Castro, Rodrigo Mora, Konstantinos Koulierakis, Nahuel Molina, Leonardo Balerdi and Marten de Roon.
Gittens and Luiz Henrique were described as the final attempts to add a wide attacking option before the window closed.
Gasperini insisted that signing an ordinary player purely to fill a squad slot would not have made sense for a Roma side aiming higher than that.
Ginevra Cattaneo
Ginevra Cattaneo grew up in Bologna with a football shirt on her back and a match playing somewhere in the background at all times. From backyard arguments about whether Maldini or Baresi was the greatest ever to staying up late watching Champions League nights, the game has always been at the centre of her life. She brings that same passion and familiarity to everything she writes, covering Serie A, Italian football culture, and the rapidly growing world of women's football in Italy.
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