Gasperini keeps Endrick talk out of his Real Madrid build-up
Roma's coach declined to discuss the on-loan-linked Real Madrid striker on the eve of a Champions League meeting with José Mourinho's side, preferring to frame the night around the fixture itself.
Gian Piero Gasperini had a simple answer when asked whether he would raise Endrick with José Mourinho before Wednesday's Champions League tie: he would not. Roma's coach used his pre-match press conference to wave away questions about the Real Madrid striker, who has been strongly linked with a January move to the Stadio Olimpico, according to Football Italia.
Asked directly if he planned to sound out Mourinho on the forward, Gasperini replied: "I don't think so. I'm not interested in the January window. We only have it at the beginning of a stretch of games, and tomorrow's will feel like something we've been missing for a long time."
Sky Sport put the same question to him before kick-off preparations, and the answer carried the same message. "I hope to hug my players. Actually, we'll hug anyway because tomorrow we'll play a match we haven't played in a long time, and for Roma, it's been a long time since they've played against the most successful team, so we hope to hug each other and be happy at the end of the game," Gasperini said, per Football Italia.
Why Gasperini shut the door on speculation
The refusal to engage is itself a piece of coaching behaviour worth reading. Gasperini is steering his squad's attention toward a fixture Roma have not faced in years rather than toward a transfer window that is still months from opening. Keeping a dressing room's focus locked onto the next ninety minutes, rather than a marquee name who might or might not arrive in January, is a standard management discipline for coaches handling high-profile opposition.
He did allow himself one aside, telling reporters he admires how Mourinho persuades clubs to back him with significant signings, a lightly needled compliment aimed at his Portuguese counterpart's recruitment pull rather than at Endrick specifically.
Endrick's thin minutes tell their own story
The numbers behind the speculation are stark. Endrick has played just four minutes for Real Madrid this season, a usage figure that functions as a plain marker of where he currently sits in the squad hierarchy. A striker reduced to four minutes of league-phase or domestic action is, by definition, not part of a club's rotation plan in any meaningful sense.
Context from last season complicates the picture, because Endrick was productive once he left Madrid's bench for regular football. On loan at Lyon for the second half of 2025-26, he scored five goals and added seven assists across 16 appearances in all competitions, a goal-involvement rate that suggests a forward capable of combining as well as finishing when given consistent minutes.
That gap between near-total exclusion in Madrid and a healthy productivity return on loan is the clearest explanation for why Serie A clubs are circling. A 20-year-old with that kind of output in a secondary league situation is exactly the profile a mid-table or top-half Serie A side can plausibly extract value from in a loan move.
A loan-only exit path explains the interest
Roma are not the only Serie A club credited with interest. Endrick has also been linked with Milan for the same window, though reports cited by Football Italia suggest Real Madrid intend to sanction only a loan departure rather than a permanent sale. That detail shapes the whole conversation: any Serie A move in January would be a short-term loan punt on reviving the goal-and-assist form he showed at Lyon, not a transfer-market gamble on a long-term asset.
For Roma specifically, the appeal of a loan-only option is that it carries limited financial risk while testing whether a player with four Real Madrid minutes but sixteen productive Lyon appearances can be reactivated in Serie A. Whether that fits Gasperini's attacking structure is a question he has, for now, declined to even entertain publicly.
Roma face Real Madrid at the Stadio Olimpico on Wednesday, the second round of the Champions League's league phase, marking Mourinho's return to the stadium where he previously managed. Gasperini's approach suggests any Endrick conversation, if it happens at all, will wait until after that result is known.