Roma midfielder Seydou Keita has revealed that Francesco Totti’s armband gesture during the capital city club’s 1-0 win over Genoa on Sunday was a sign of respect despite reports claiming otherwise.
The 34-year-old has cleared up rumours of a feud between him and the Giallorossi legend, as footage of a seemingly angry Totti rejecting the captain’s armband from the former Barcelona man during the clash with the Grifone made its rounds on the internet in recent days, and has insisted that there has never been any sort of disrespect between the two veteran players since his arrival at the Lupi over the summer.
Keita spoke to MaliFootball.com about the sideline incident and gave an explanation of what really happened as Totti was entering the pitch, denying all false claims of a rift in the players’ relationship.
“When Totti took Adem Ljajic’s place, I was wearing the armband,” said the Malian international. “But since he is the first captain of the team, I handed the armband to him because that’s how it works and I’d seen others do it too.
“He made that gesture then telling me to keep it, but I was also insisting that he take the armband. Basically Totti felt so strongly that I deserved to wear the armband that he didn’t want to take it.
“That’s all that happened. Looking at the videos you can see that the coach, who was stood next to him, was also telling me to keep it.
“It’s true that looking at Totti’s gesture it might seem as though he was refusing it, but he was telling me to keep it.
“He wasn’t angry and there’s no reason why he would have been. Daniele De Rossi, he and I are the team captains. I don’t think he was angry because he hadn’t played either.
“His gesture was just to tell me to keep the armband. I’ve been at Roma for five months now and there’s already a lot of respect between us.
“Strangely a lot of people have thought highly of this incident in Italy – the fact that I wanted to give the armband back to Totti is a sign of respect and the fact that Totti told me to keep it is a sign of respect.
“For them it was two champions who showed respect to each other.
“Some believe there’s a lack of respect between us? These are people who don’t know me. If we’re talking about respect, I’m the first person to respect everyone and I’m the last to give any disrespect.
“Totti has never shown a lack of respect to me and it won’t ever happen either because we respect each other enormously. Anyway, there was no lack of respect in this incident.
“After the game, we talked about it straight away. He asked me why I wanted to give him the armband back, I said that he is the captain, and he replied that because I’m a captain as well it’s not a problem.
“But we talked about it quickly without giving it much importance, because it wasn’t a big deal for us. Let me reassure everyone, it wasn’t a lack of respect.”
