Rudi Garcia Reaches Deal With Roma?

Technically speaking, Sunday is the first day of the week, and if today's rumors are any indication, the managerial waters around Rome will grow murkier in the days ahead. Last week Walter Sabatini narrowed the field of candidates to three men: Rudi Garcia, Marcelo Bielsa and Gerardo ‘Tata' Martino, effectively erasing his 90% guarantee that the new manager would be a non-Italian.

Well, according to multiple sources that field may have been narrowed down to two men: Garcia and Bielsa. According to other sources still, that field has been narrowed to one man, Rudi Garcia. You'll notice that both links stem from the Corriere dello Sport source, which claims Garcia has penned a two year deal with Roma, paying the Frenchman €1.5m per year.

However, according to this piece, Bielsa also has an arrangement with Roma, also for two years, for about €1.25m per year. So while we have no idea how Sabatini's decision making process works, it appears, at the very least, he's hedging his bets by offering deals to both, which would seem to suggest this will be an 11th hour decision.

Both men come rife with questions and concerns, but the longer this drags on, the more harried Roma's mercato becomes; it's hard to shop for players, let alone sell the idea of coming to Roma, when you don't know how they'll be utilized or who will be calling the shots. But if you've been paying attention the past several years, that's par for the course with this club.

Now, mind you, these are still purely speculative links, nothing close to an official word has been uttered, though it appears it's now Bielsa vs Garcia for the bench of Roma, with the smart money trending towards Garcia.

Our long international nightmare might finally be over.