Why Abraham has already split the Roma dressing room

Robin Bairner

• 3 Sep 2021 16:03 CDT
• 3 min read

Tammy Abraham might have hit the ground running on the field with Roma, but his presence in the dressing room has ruffled some feathers already at the Serie A club.

Abraham departed Chelsea in the summer to make a €40 million move to Roma, where Jose Mourinho targeted him as a key addition.

The pressure is on both men as a consequence, with Roma having one of the biggest net spends in Europe over the course of the summer.

Mourinho has gained a reputation for spending big to little effect in recent years, so he needs Abraham to come good, but while the forward has scored one and set up two as Roma have made a perfect start to the season, all is not well.

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Abraham has unsettled Roma

Gazzetta dello Sport reports that Abraham’s presence has had an unsettling effect on the locker room, which has not greeted the presence of the Englishman warmly.

The reason is quite simply that Abraham has blown apart Roma’s wage structure.

According to the Italian paper, the forward is on €4.5m-per-year basic salary, with that potentially rising as high as €6m if certain targets are met.

While this might be seen as a standard salary in Chelsea’s star-studded dressing room, that is certainly not the case in Roma, where even the most celebrated stars have been on more modest salaries.

Gazzetta states that only Edin Dzeko and Daniele De Rossi have ever come close to such pay at Roma.

Instead, captain Lorenzo Pellegrini is on €2.5m, Nicolo Zaniolo is on €2.4m and Gianluca Manicini is on €2.2m.

Roma are set to be tested in the months ahead as Pellegrini is expected to sign a new contract in the relatively near future, but he is set to push for a big increase following the revelations regarding Abraham’s wages. It is set to put a massive strain on the team.