The wait has become one of the defining features of Roma's modern history. The club's third and most recent league title was secured on June 17, 2001, when Fabio Capello's side beat Parma 3-1 at the Stadio Olimpico to finish above Juventus and Lazio.
AS Roma collected 75 points from 34 matches, scoring 68 goals and losing only three times.
Amedeo Mangone was part of that squad.
The former defender had arrived from Bologna and, although his playing time was limited during the title-winning campaign, he was an experienced member of a dressing room containing Francesco Totti, Gabriel Batistuta, Vincenzo Montella, Cafu, Aldair, Walter Samuel and Emerson.
For Mangone, however, the achievement was about more than the collection of famous names.
“It was a very important experience for me,” he tells Football Presse.
“We as a team knew that after the investment made by the club we needed to do our best to be at the top. We had one coach like Capello who was a winner and that season everything went well because we from the first weeks were first in the league.”
Roma had spent heavily to construct a team capable of finally ending an 18-year wait for the championship, most notably bringing Batistuta to the capital from Fiorentina.
The pressure was enormous, particularly in a city where Lazio had won the previous Scudetto.
“To win the title with Roma and for their fans after the year that Lazio had won was something incredible for everyone — for the fans, the players but also the club and our President Sensi.”
It remains one of the most celebrated teams in Roma's history. Twenty-five years later, the club has repeatedly returned to the achievement, with Capello himself discussing each member of his squad during the anniversary celebrations this summer. He remembered Mangone as an experienced centre-back who provided solidity and was an important part of the group.
Mangone's own memories of the dressing room reveal why that group worked.
Playing alongside some of the biggest names in world football could easily have created a divide between the established stars and those fighting for their opportunities. Instead, Mangone remembers a group that made everyone feel involved.
“It made me feel important and part of the project of the club,” he said.
“Also training and playing with them made me a better player and helped me to fix my mistakes.”
The names around him were extraordinary. Totti was already the face of Roma, Batistuta had arrived as one of the world's great strikers and Montella was one of the most dangerous forwards in Italian football.
Yet Mangone insists their status never prevented them from being good teammates.
“Despite being such great players in the end they were so humble and they had a wonderful character as human beings.
“They treated us less-known players very well and were there to help us in every moment we needed it.”
That sense of collective responsibility was particularly important in a squad competing under Capello, a manager Mangone had already encountered during his time in Milan's youth system.
His description of the future Italian coaching great is revealing.
“I remembered him as someone who was a sergeant, an iron man.”
Working with Capello at Roma confirmed that impression, but Mangone also saw the qualities behind the reputation.
“He was a coach who knew every detail about his team and the opponents, he knew how to make the players feel well and important and due to him being a winner he passed through his winning philosophy also to us players.”
The numbers from that season underline how complete Capello's team was. Batistuta scored 20 league goals, Totti 13 and Montella 13, while Roma conceded only 33 goals across the 34-game campaign.
For a defender, though, the daily challenge was not simply trying to stop the opposition. It was trying to survive training against three of Serie A's most gifted attackers.
Asked which of Totti, Batistuta or Montella was the hardest to defend, Mangone eventually settled on the man who would become Roma's greatest modern icon.
“To be honest with you all of them were very hard to mark in the training sessions, but I would mention a little bit more than the others Totti because from him you didn't know ever what to expect.
“He was a player who could see things that the others couldn't.”
It was a remarkable group, and Mangone had the perspective of a defender who had spent years in Serie A facing some of the best attackers in the world. When asked who had been the hardest opponent of his career, there was no hesitation.
“There have been a lot because, in that time in Italy, there were some of the strongest strikers in the world.
“I can say that the strongest player I have played against has been Ronaldo, the Brazilian striker. To mark him was impossible for every defender.”
There were plenty of alternatives: Christian Vieri, Batistuta, Montella and George Weah.
“For me, Ronaldo was just from another level.”
That is the perspective that makes Mangone's memories of the 2001 Roma side particularly valuable now.
The club is preparing to begin another season under Gian Piero Gasperini, having returned to the Champions League after finishing third last season. The Giallorossi will open their 2026-27 Serie A campaign at home against Fiorentina on August 24.
There will be new players, a new coach and new ambitions. But the benchmark remains the same. For a quarter of a century, every Roma team has ultimately been measured against the side that Capello led to the Scudetto in 2001.
Mangone was there to see what made that team special — and, perhaps most importantly, he remembers that it was never simply about the stars.
“It was a very important experience for me.
“We as a team knew that after the investment made by the club we needed to do our best to be at the top.”
Twenty-five years on, Roma are still chasing the feeling that team created.