"A player like me would behave the same way whether I was captain or not, but with the armband you feel more responsibility for a club as important as Fiorentina, in the year of the centenary," De Gea said in the mixed zone after the game.
Fiorentina had opened pre-season with a win over Gubbio before losing for the first time against a QPR side further along in their own preparations. Arthur Atta and Roberto Piccoli scored for Fabio Grosso's side, but two first-half goals from the home side, including a penalty converted by Oliver Madsen, proved decisive.
De Gea, who started and wore the captain's armband for the third pre-season game running, put the display down to Fiorentina's early stage of preparation under their new coach.
"They were further along in their preparation, we've only had ten days of training and with new players, so we're taking it step by step. We have to wait a little, but I like what I see. Beyond the result today, a strong team is emerging, but as I said, we need to go step by step," he said.
Fiorentina's own transfer business is also taking shape, with reports in Italy linking midfielder Giovanni Fabbian with a move to Besiktas. Turkish journalist Serkan Morova has claimed the Istanbul club, managed by Vincenzo Italiano, have identified the 22-year-old as a target for the coming season, though no formal talks have yet begun between the two clubs.
Italiano knows Fabbian well from his time at Bologna, where he regularly used the midfielder in a more advanced role as a number 10 rather than his more natural box-to-box position, getting the best out of his forward-thinking runs.
Fabbian joined Fiorentina in January as part of a loan swap involving Simon Sohm, with an obligation to buy worth €13 million plus €1.5 million in bonuses that was triggered in May once Fiorentina's Serie A survival was mathematically secured. He made his Fiorentina debut against Cagliari on 24 January and appeared as a second-half substitute in Saturday's defeat to QPR.