I have been following the case of Nicolò Tresoldi with growing alarm. For he is an Italian footballer who, for reasons I find increasingly difficult to accept, is German. I don’t even know how this is legal. The boy was born in Cagliari. Raised in Gubbio. His father is Italian, his mother Argentine of Italian descent. He lived in Italy until his family relocated to Germany in 2018, when he was thirteen.
Thirteen.
An age at which a young man should already have reasonably established opinions about the world and have had his bar mitzvah. Surely Nicolò Tresoldi could have settled the matter of being Italian. By 2022, he had German citizenship.
Four years.
I’ve been in relationships longer than that and still felt like a trespasser using the bathroom at her parents’ house. Yet this boy had apparently become German.
A Suspiciously Fast Conversion
At first I thought surely this had to be one of those Qatari World Cup arrangements. Find a Brazilian, expedite the paperwork, tell him he has always loved Doha. But that’s not the case here. The Germans had simply made him one of their own. Entirely legally. Four years after he arrived.
Is there no concern for cultural self-preservation?
My dirty Italian people are now infiltrating the German national pool, bringing with us our questionable loyalties and the conviction that tax evasion should be protected by UNESCO as an endangered folk tradition. What has become of German vigilance?
I concede that he went to school there. He learned the language. He made friends. Hannover gave him an education in football, developed him professionally, and helped make him the player he is today.
But three and a half years after he left Italy, the Azzurri won the European Championship. He was sixteen. Am I expected to believe that Nicolò Tresoldi, who had spent virtually his entire childhood in Italy, was sitting in his living room in Germany in July 2021, hoping that England would win? That Chiellini lifting that trophy at Wembley meant nothing to him?
Please. I am willing to accommodate many things in this life. This is becoming difficult.
A club is where you work. A National Team is where you remember. – Sam Adamo
I realize that Italy is now asking him to reconsider his international future only after Germany took him through its youth system. But international football is a strange institution. We are allowed to have clubs. We are allowed to have employers. We are allowed to leave home, live elsewhere, learn other languages, and have a wonderful time abroad.
For some reason, we have now extended this freedom of association to the national team.
I find that troubling. A club is somewhere you go to work. A national team is somewhere you go to remember who you are.
I feel that very strongly, perhaps because I have spent my whole life outside Italy. I was born in Canada. I have nothing against the place. There is much to admire. I have several complaints, of course, but nobody has asked. It is a young country, still negotiating the question of what exactly it is, and one of its great features is that it allows people like me to maintain an attachment to somewhere else. I have taken considerable advantage of this.
My family was Italian before Canada had any reason to concern itself with us. There were generations of people who lived and died in little towns, speaking the language, eating the food, fighting the wars, marrying one another, producing more Italians, eventually producing me. I should think it a great insult to this considerable genealogical undertaking if, after all that, I decided to become German because the facilities in Hannover were nice.
The Italian National team gives me a place in a story that started long before I was born. I would rather play thirty seconds of a friendly against San Marino for Italy, tear my ACL, meniscus, MCL and whatever other ligaments remain available, and be stretchered off singing the anthem than win a World Cup for Canada.
And I have already torn my ACL, so I know what I am offering. This is a serious proposal.
The Lamine Yamal precedent
I appreciate that other people have different relationships with national identity. Take Lamine Yamal. In 2022, when Morocco eliminated Spain from the World Cup, a fifteen-year-old Yamal was filmed in the dressing room at La Masia wearing a Moroccan jersey, savouring the occasion at Spain’s expense. His father is Moroccan. The boy was born and raised in Spain. He eventually chose Spain.
Fair enough.
And I know what you’re thinking. He was just having a laugh. Taking the piss with the lads. Surely we needn’t read so much into the behaviour of a fifteen-year-old boy.
He was gloating. He had just watched the country of his father eliminate the country of his birth, and he was positively delighted. He put on the shirt. He celebrated. In case there was any ambiguity about where his sympathies lay, he was kind enough to remove it.
It is unnatural to pull against your father. And I cannot help but suspect that, given the choice, the boy would rather win a World Cup for Morocco. Instead, he has been condemned to the miserable consolation of winning both the European Championship and the World Cup for Spain before his twentieth birthday.
Poor child. My heart bleeds. If I were Spanish, I would be disgusted.
Of course, I say this as a man born in Canada, a country that has treated me well, all while harbouring a foreign allegiance and regarding the land of my birth with a certain casual disloyalty. Canada has been exceedingly good to my family. I have repaid this generosity by becoming, in matters of national sentiment, something of an Italian sleeper agent. There is a certain ingratitude in this which is not lost on me.
But I am Italian, so I have no interest in investigating the matter further.
Spain, for its part, is happy to look the other way. Yamal is happy to win trophies and be celebrated as a national hero. Spain has an extraordinary footballer, albeit one who once savoured its demise and now appears perfectly content to use the Spanish flag as a vehicle for personal glory.
A Vacancy in Civil Aviation
What troubles me about Tresoldi is that he was already Italian. He left.
His mother had a job opportunity in Germany. That is how the whole thing happened. His father has even explained that they might have moved to Liverpool instead.
Liverpool!
Are you telling me that we could now be discussing Nicolò Tresoldi’s emotional attachment to England because his mother’s employer happened to have an opening in Merseyside? Must the entire international identity of an Italian boy be determined by vacancies in civil aviation? It is an administrative absurdity.
And there is the matter of his father. Emanuele Tresoldi. An Italian footballer. A former Atalanta player. A member of the Italian team that won the European Under-21 Championship in 1994. The very same competition that his son now wishes to finish with Germany. I am finding this increasingly personal.
We have seen this story before, only in reverse.
Giuseppe Rossi. Born in New Jersey to Italian parents. Raised in America. Offered an opportunity to represent the United States, a country that had given him everything. He chose Italy. His father, Fernando, had maintained the connection to the homeland, and Giuseppe understood it from childhood.
A beautiful thing. A son carrying the flag of his parents back across the ocean. We received him gladly.
Now, apparently, the bill has come due. The Germans have found an Italian boy whose family moved to Hannover, and they intend to keep him. Perhaps this is karma. Perhaps the Americans have finally sent an invoice. I reject the transaction.
In any case, what makes the Tresoldi affair especially maddening is the apparent lack of competitive advantage in his hesitation.
Germany is a great footballing nation. So are we. We have each won four World Cups. Admittedly, we have lately developed a habit of watching them from home. But these are temporary administrative difficulties. The country remains. The shirt remains. We have suffered a great deal in recent years, and we could use a little help.
And even if Germany were winning every World Cup while Italy found itself below Vatican City in the FIFA rankings, what difference should that make? Am I to abandon my country because it has become bad at football?
What kind of arrangement is that?
If Brazil offered me the number ten shirt tomorrow, I would thank them for the extraordinary misunderstanding and decline. I cannot become Brazilian. I could learn Portuguese. I could move to São Paulo. I could even develop a very convincing Brazilian accent and start dancing at inappropriate moments. But I would remain an Italian man committing an elaborate fraud.
There are plenty of opportunities to pretend to be somebody else in ordinary life. International football should offer some relief from this.
Jürgen, Forgive Me
Tresoldi now plays for Club Brugge. He is developing into an excellent striker. Italy wants him. Germany wants him. Jürgen Klopp has even spoken to him. I understand the appeal. Klopp is a charming man. A wonderful personality. He will put his arm around you, laugh, tell you how much he believes in you. Very difficult to refuse.
But eventually you must look that man in the eye and say: “Jürgen, forgive me. I have to go home. I am going to spend the next decade trying to win a World Cup with Domenico Berardi. Please respect my decision.
And this is where the situation becomes completely deranged.
Tresoldi has reportedly decided to postpone his senior international allegiance until after the 2027 European Under-21 Championship. He wants to finish the tournament with his boys. He made a promise to the German coach. He does not wish to abandon them.
A lovely sentiment. F*ck them.
You have an opportunity to represent Italy at the senior level, and you are worried about finishing a youth tournament? It is like Anne Hathaway arriving at your door, personally requesting your company, and you saying:
Anne, I would love to. But I have already paid for Pornhub Premium through July. I would hate to waste the subscription. Please understand. I have made a commitment.
There comes a point where loyalty to one’s existing arrangements becomes a form of madness. I understand friendship. I understand honouring promises. But there are larger obligations in life. And frankly, the German boys will survive. They have a country of eighty million people. They will find someone.
A Proposal for a family meeting
Emanuele, meanwhile, has said that Nicolò will decide with his heart. That he feels Italian. That there are bonds of gratitude to Germany which cannot be ignored. And that his son must ultimately be allowed to choose. Very progressive. Very modern. But sir, with respect, you won the European Under-21 Championship for Italy. Your son has already helped Germany eliminate Italy from the same competition.
At what point does a father intervene?
I would have him back in Gubbio immediately. Nothing dramatic. No lectures. Bring him home for the summer. Have him attend a wedding. A proper wedding. Get the whole family together. Have somebody bring out the old photographs. Let his grandmother feed him until he becomes physically unfit for international competition.
Find a lovely girl from the neighbourhood who remembers him from childhood. Have her say, innocently, how nice it is to see him again. Let the boy remember what he has left behind. Take him through the town. Show him the church. At some point an elderly man should approach him, touch his face, and say something incomprehensible about having known his grandfather. That should do it.
We must make him feel the weight of the place.
Return to Zion, young man.
And by Zion, I mean Gubbio.
You can run, but you cannot hide.
Because I do understand Germany’s claim on him. He grew up there during important years. He learned football there. The friendships are real. German citizenship is real. I have considered the German position carefully.
I find it insufficient.
And people will tell me that the Italian federation has mishandled this. Fine. They probably have. They should have called earlier. They should have made the boy feel wanted. They should have sent someone to Bruges with flowers and a written apology. I accept all of this. But I cannot believe we have reached a point where the responsibility for being Italian lies with the Italian Football Federation. What an extraordinary burden to place upon an organization that can barely organize a World Cup qualification campaign. Surely there must be some things that survive the incompetence of the FIGC.
A young man must take responsibility for his own country. His family, too. There is something that should be passed down, something that should be understood without requiring a telephone call from Roberto Mancini.
I am aware that there are people born to immigrant families who genuinely belong to the countries in which they were raised. I would welcome someone who has made Italy his home if he wishes to represent it. I hope every player who wears the shirt feels something profound when he puts it on.
But I cannot accept the idea that international football should become another calculation about where one might enjoy the best professional opportunities. We have enough of that in club football.
There must be some room left for sentiment. For an irrational attachment to a place. And it is not lost on me that a man may develop ties to two countries. Of course he may. You lived in Germany. You have an affinity for the Christmas markets. Wonderful. You went to India one summer and developed a profound appreciation for the Kama Sutra. I congratulate you.
Enjoy the world.
But you have a home. And you must always be prepared to answer when it calls. Stop stepping out on your wife, Nicolò. You may protest that you never married Italy, that no vows were exchanged.
Nonsense.
Your ancestors made them on your behalf. And I am not convinced the Germans particularly need you to become overcome with patriotic fervour, either. German national pride is a delicate historical matter. If they start singing the anthem a little too enthusiastically, I imagine even the Germans begin to worry.
But Italy?
You hear Fratelli d’Italia, and something should happen to you. You should remember who you are. Your father. His father. The little town. The centuries of people who made your existence possible.
You may sing the German anthem beautifully, Nicolò. I have no objection. But I want you to cry when you hear ours.
The Arithmetic
Tresoldi is entitled to make his own decision. Of course he is. But I am entitled to be profoundly dissatisfied with it.
I have considered the German position. I have considered his childhood, his friendships, his education. I am willing to let him retain his German citizenship. He may even keep a house there, should he wish. A nice house. With a garden. Raise a family, take the children to Oktoberfest, enjoy the beer halls. I have no intention of depriving the boy of Germany. I merely wish to relieve Germany of the impression that he is German.
There must be limits.
Italy had him for thirteen years, and his family for considerably longer than that, if we are prepared to include his ancestors, which I am. Germany has had him for eight. I should think the arithmetic favours us. And yes, perhaps he feels German. Perhaps he has developed a genuine affection for the place. Perhaps he hears Deutschlandlied and feels something move inside him.
Fine.
But surely when Fratelli d’Italia comes on, he ought to become briefly unwell. Some ancestral disturbance. A sudden recollection of Gubbio. His father in the Azzurri shirt. A grandmother appearing before him like the Virgin Mary, asking why he has done this to the family.
Something.
I am not asking the boy to suffer. I simply want the appropriate amount of suffering to accompany his decision. And I would like Emanuele to intervene. The man won the European Under-21 Championship for Italy. His son is now refusing to consider Italy until he has finished playing in the European Under-21 Championship for Germany.
What a development.
There should be a family meeting. Nothing aggressive. A little conversation. Perhaps a priest could attend. We need to remind the boy that he is Italian. This should take no longer than an afternoon. I am prepared to contribute if necessary, although I should hope the family could settle the matter privately.
Because I have other responsibilities. I am trying to establish an Italian school in Montreal. The Republic has a great many problems, and I have already taken it upon myself to address several of them. I cannot spend the rest of my life retrieving centre-forwards from the German youth system.
Nicolò Tresoldi is from Gubbio.
I am from Montreal.
I should not have to be the one explaining this.
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