At the end, for once, James Pallotta was still. It is not something that comes easily to him. Pallotta, A.S. Roma’s president, is, by his own admission, inclined to motion. When he attends games, he prefers to stand, rather than sit. At home, in Boston, he turns on televisions in five rooms and paces between them.
For that one moment on Tuesday, as the final whistle blew on Roma’s 3-0 defeat of Barcelona, the culmination of one of the greatest comebacks, one of the greatest shocks, in Champions League history, he simply stopped, and watched.
In the stands, 56,000 Roma fans were hugging, bouncing, singing and celebrating Roma’s charge from a 4-1 deficit after last week’s first leg against what was shaping up to be one of the great teams in Barcelona history.