Meet Italian Soccer’s Most Experienced American Owner

Joe Tacopina dreams of bringing Italian soccer club SPAL back to Serie A, a sports league that enjoys growing popularity with U.S. investors and soccer fans.

From his office in Ferrara, a Renaissance city located 30 miles northeast of Bologna, Tacopina, a criminal defense attorney by training, talked about his ambitions since taking over as the president of SPAL and shared what he’s learned in more than a decade as a top executive across four Italian soccer clubs.

Tacopina’s Journey In Italian Soccer

In 2011, when it was uncommon for North American investors to show interest in Italian soccer, Tacopina was part of the first ownership group that bought AS Roma, making it the first American-owned club in Italy’s top flight.

He sat on the AS Roma board as the vice president for four years before moving on to Bologna and then Venezia, where he set the enviable record for being the first president in Italian professional soccer to earn three promotions in a row (one at Bologna in 2014/15 and twice in two years at Venezia from 2015 to 2017).

In the summer of 2021, Tacopina took over SPAL, starting a new chapter of his journey in Italian soccer, which in our previous interview he defined as “one of the most undervalued properties in all sports.”

All these years operating at AS Roma, Bologna, Venezia and SPAL allowed Tacopina, a Brooklyn native of Italian descent, to gain invaluable knowledge of the pitfalls of Italy’s professional soccer system.

“Understand that you’re from a different world. This is not like any other world, especially the North American business world. It’s just different,” Tacopina warned. “If you come in here, thinking that you’re gonna break the mold, doing anything the way it’s done in the States, you’re gonna be in for a rough ride. And it’s not gonna end up well.”

Tacopina, 56, firmly believes that experienced North American investors can make a difference in a soccer system - the Italian one - that lacks some financial discipline in the way many clubs are run. This know-how, however, needs to be applied with a gentle touch, avoiding the risk of getting caught in the hopeless attempt of challenging the status quo.

“If you come in with fresh ideas, like I do with the North American sports business model of mine, and try marrying those ideas with the cultural institutions and traditions that are in place here, and you don’t try to upset that apple cart, then you have a chance to do well,” he concluded.

SPAL, A Year Later

In the first 15 months at SPAL, Tacopina estimates that he and his partners have contributed about €20 million ($20m) through Tacopina Italian Football Investment Srl. These resources have funded, among other things, stadium renovations, a real estate project with dormitories for the academy players and, last February, the acquisition of 100% of the club’s shares.

Like most Italian soccer clubs, however, Tacopina explained that SPAL continue to feel the financial repercussions of the pandemic. Because sustainability remains the club’s top priority, he said that SPAL took significant cost-cutting measures with respect to the 2021/22 season, with the wage bill experiencing a 30% reduction for the ongoing Serie B campaign.

To be competitive in the league while relying on a limited budget (the Estensi rank 13th out of 20 in Serie B for club market value), Tacopina and his staff have assembled a roster that is largely made of players that SPAL own or have an obligation to buy: This strategy, Tacopina explained, is meant to instill into the players a sense of belonging to the SPAL family, with the goal of building the kind of loyalty that he believes is an essential ingredient for success at such a competitive level.

“It’s not about the amount we’re spending,” Tacopina said. “It’s how we’re spending it.”

Ultimately, his idea of structuring a soccer club takes inspiration from teams like Atalanta and Ajax, who over the years have managed to overachieve at the domestic and European level while relying on modest financial resources and, most importantly, keeping out of the red.

What’s Next: Daniele De Rossi

Following a sluggish start to the 2022/23 Serie B season, SPAL opted for a change in the head coach position, as the club announced with an official note a few weeks ago. The choice for the new manager fell on 2006 FIFA World Cup champion Daniele De Rossi, one of AS Roma’s most representative midfielders at the time Tacopina was the club’s vice president.

“He’s one of my closest friends, I’ve known him for 13 years,” Tacopina said. “He’s a natural born leader, he’s a winner.”

De Rossi mentions the club’s projects, ambitions and fans, as well as the president’s personality, as the main reasons that made him accept SPAL’s offer for his first head-coach job. (De Rossi was Roberto Mancini’s assistant coach in the Italy national team that last year clinched the UEFA Euro 2020).

Under De Rossi’s leadership, SPAL hope to give consistency to their results and climb the Serie B table, which currently sees them sitting in 11th position after 12 games.

“I found incredible humanity, great devotion by the players and a serious club with a training center that makes you feel like working 20 hours a day with facilities that would be envied even by Serie A clubs,” De Rossi said in a written interview. “We (De Rossi and Tacopina) talked about a project to develop and a clear path to follow in the near future.”