“Caffe Americano, Per Favore”: How Americans Are Leading the Serie A Revolution

Scott McTominay has proven that you don’t need to speak Italian to excel in Serie A and the legacy calcio media loves it. 

“For now, I can order a ‘Caffe Americano, per favore,” McTominay told a DAZN translator following Napoli’s win over Roma on Sunday. 

Undoubtedly, McTominay isn’t the only Serie A player learning a few new Italian words with each passing day. Adapting to a new culture and language takes time, exemplified best by Giovanni Trapattoni’s Bundesliga adventures. 

From a consumer perspective, seasoned calcio fans know what it’s like to muster up the courage – and their best Italian accent – to make themselves understood at bars around the peninsula. Even those with Italian heritage are labelled as Americani by frustrated restaurant staff having difficulty tuning in.

Spritz and coffee are amongst the most popular drinks ordered by tourists. For most Italian residents, requesting the latter is often the first order of the day. 

Yes, coffee is sacred in Italy, and in any religion, there are rules, good deeds and sins: 

1. Cappuccino is only ever ordered after 11am by tourists.
2. Espresso is allowed and encouraged 24-7. 
3. It’s a sin to call it expresso.
4. In Italy, espresso is known simply as caffè (coffee to Italians)
5. Stand at the bar to consume your caffè or pay a service fee to drink it while sitting down.
6. Before ordering from the barista, pay for your caffè at the till.

Coffee, like football, can serve as a unifier and has evolved into a way for non-Italian speakers to connect with locals. It could be considered a beverage that strengthens diplomatic relations at a local level.

Gone are the days when hasty bar owners defaulted to ignoring tourists struggling to vocalise their food orders. These days, bar operators enjoy connecting with visitors travelling through Italy to experience culture and, for many of us calcio purists, the football too.

Unlike previous generations, bar owners rarely get annoyed by stranieri (strangers and foreigners) struggling to voice an order. Sure, they may respond to you in English, but that’s because some of them want to show you how worldly Italy has become.

And the tables have turned in cities like Milan, Bologna and Florence where a hefty portion of bars and restaurants are now owned and operated by business-minded immigrants. Yes, you can find first and second-generation Italians of Chinese origin pumping out coffee in every major town, and often with better service and cheaper prices.

Return visitors to Italy might be shocked to see just how much more multicultural Italy is in 2024. At the turn of the century, Italy followed the lead of other European nations, promoting foreign investment and various incentives for ancestral Italians living abroad to import their tremendous work ethic to bolster the nation’s weakening economy. 

Of course, calcio was always going to be impacted. After all, Serie A is the symbolic home of footballing greatness and is considered an under-appreciated asset compared to many other top domestic sporting competitions. 

In 2011, the Giallorossi made history when they became the first Serie A team to become ‘foreign-owned’, but still kind of Italian, when American business Thomas DiBenedetto bought a majority stake from Rosella Sensi, the daughter of the late Franco Sensi, who acquired the club in 1993 and won a Scudetto in 2001.

DiBenedetto’s Abbruzzese roots meant Roma would technically be run by a coalition of Italian bloodlines, somewhat placating Giancarlo Abete, the former FIGC President who cringed at the thought of non-Italian ownership amongst Serie A’s elite teams. 

Boston-based Italian-American James Pallotta bought the controlling stake at Roma in 2012 and sold it in 2020 to Texans, The Friedkin Group.

Abete, like the majority of fans at the time, didn’t want Serie A to follow in the footsteps of the Premier League, which was English in name but almost entirely funded by external forces at club level. However, their model (financial rise and outrageous wages) has enticed La Liga, Ligue 1, the German Bundesliga and Serie A to change course. 

Since 2020, more and more Serie A fans have become desensitised to foreign ownership, whether it be Canadian (Bologna), Chinese (Milan and Inter), Indonesian (Como 1907), or American: Atalanta, Fiorentina, Genoa, Inter, Milan, Parma, Roma and Venezia.

On a multinational level, Serie A’s ratio of Italian to foreign club proprietors stands at 50-50 at the time of writing.

Never before has the Italian top flight had more non-Italian owners, and with Maurizio Setti reportedly negotiating a deal to sell Hellas Verona, it’s set to have more foreign control than home-grown.

By January 2025, nine US-owned clubs could be in Serie A, just in time for President-elect Donald Trump to claim that America is Making Serie A Great Again.

Like Roma, Verona would be controlled by a group hailing from Texas, with Austin-based Presidio Investments reportedly in talks to buy the 1984-85 Serie A champions for under €75M.

Investing in Serie A makes sense for Americans and is far more affordable considering the huge sums required to take over a team competing in traditional American sports like the NBA, NFL or even the MLS.

Moreover, Serie A is a competition with five Champions League allocations, set in a country dominated heavily by football. It’s much cheaper to gamble on a club like Bologna to make the Champions League than start an MLS club from scratch, pay tens of millions for a marquee player like Lionel Messi, and still struggle to compete.

Aside from a select few clubs that have successfully built infrastructure for the future, a valid argument can be made that Serie A has been stuck in an echo chamber while other leagues have been streaking ahead on a global level.

Benefits to foreign ownership include but are not limited to funding stadium redevelopment, better match-day experiences, and improved fan engagement. That’s not to say that Italian-owned clubs haven’t persevered somewhat with stubborn city councils along the way—credit to Udinese, Atalanta, Juventus and Frosinone for bringing their fanbases into the 21st century. 

Since the invention of the internet, social media channels have been fighting for football fans’ hearts and minds. Unfortunately for fans living abroad, the level of content for English-speaking calcio lovers has been poor.

Additionally, Italian clubs have lagged behind most others in terms of infrastructure, branding and sponsorships for far too long— the main reason behind Pallotta’s sale of Roma. 

On the other hand, to paraphrase Paolo Maldini after his departure from Milan, there are issues with those buying Italian clubs without understanding its football ecosystem.

Now, with so many voices from abroad set to dominate the Serie A General Assembly, we could be on the cusp of something special.

2025 could be the watershed moment where a hybrid version of calcio takes over. Imagine how great Serie A could be if everything worked smoothly. I dare to dream.

Regardless, Serie A’s resurgence in European competitions has shown investors that the Money Ball model is a winner if executed correctly: buy cheap, invest in the local community and youth academies, and operate intelligently throughout transfer windows. Build gradually year after year, and you, too, can win continental silverware like Atalanta. 

Como showed Ryan Reynolds and Wrexham that taking a club from non-professional football to the top flight is achievable. A decade of diligence has transported Joey Saputo’s Bologna from Serie B to the Champions League. Rocco Commisso’s persistence with Fiorentina took them to consecutive European Finals. 

With fresh ideas, Verona fans can start to dream too, and perhaps return to the glory days with their own McTominay someday. Even the Napoli talisman, by now, knows that calcio and coffee are woven deep into Italian life. Yes, the traditional espresso will undoubtedly remain the most popular coffee in the country, but nobody can deny that Caffè Americano is here to stay. 

One of the best things about the majority of Serie A being owned by new faces is that inroads will be increasingly made into English-speaking territories, and we here at Destination Calcio hope to be part of a revolution which galvanises Italian football fans, podcasters and broadcasters so that millions of fans outside of Italy get quality content.

Standby for our big announcement next week…