KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Nicholas Gioacchini was a world away from Kansas City, literally and figuratively.
The 20-year-old KC-born striker had spent his early years playing soccer in and around Overland Park. He and his family lived on Switzer Road.
The emphasis was on fun back then: Gioacchini's team, the Orange Stars, was mainly just a way for grade school-aged kids to learn the basics of the game and make friends. Gioacchini even had goals taken away in indoor games because he slide-tackled, which was banned to minimize the risk of injury.
It was never so much about the competition then, Gioacchini said. Just kicking a ball around for the heck of it.
"I remember getting our orange little jerseys," Gioacchini said. "These orange jerseys that said Blue Valley Soccer Club. It was just playing ball with these kids that wanted to play ball, too. ... It was pleasure, it was just fun. It wasn't a job, it wasn't work, it was just fun."
Gioacchini moved with his parents, brother and sister to Italy when he was 8. Leaving KC behind, one of the family's first orders of business was to find a soccer club that Nicholas could tag along with. But Italy is a rabid footballing nation with demands of class and excellence — the national team's current run in the Euro 2020 underscores the game's importance there.
And Italians had little patience for pleasantries.
Gioacchini, who at the time spoke no Italian and had little understanding of the culture, struggled to adapt to a school system that wasn't always welcoming as a foreign person of color. His mother, Joan Westcarr, remembers when he was kicked in the back by a teammate during practice, along with other occasions where Italian parents would encourage their children to hash out differences on the soccer pitch ... by fighting.
Gioacchini, shy and reserved as a child, wasn't one for such aggression. But he learned quickly that Italian football, as his mother put it, was war.
"I didn't think about what it was going to do for them," Westcarr said of the move to Italy. "I didn't move much as a kid, so I don't know how it's going to change them. ... They never really felt lonely when they got to a place, but it was always an adjustment."
It becomes ironic then that even as Gioacchini has adjusted well to the European game — he currently plays professionally for French second-division team Stade Malherbe Caen — the biggest moment in his professional career thus far will take place in the city where his love of soccer began.
Gioacchini was selected as a member of the U.S. Men's National Team. Coach Gregg Berhalter's 23-man squad for the CONCACAF Gold Cup kicks off its campaign with a match against Haiti at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Children's Mercy Park. That match, plus the Americans' other two games in Group B, will be played in Kansas City, Kan.
When Gioacchini arrived in KC for the USMNT's first training session here Tuesday, it was the first time he'd returned to the city since leaving for Europe over a decade ago. He remarked in a news conference early in the week that when he got off the plane at Kansas City International Airport, even the smells were exactly as he'd remembered.
There were sights he remembered, too. As well as some he didn't.
"I'm getting my bag out of the baggage claim (and) just recognizing almost when I had left last not the exact situation, but the area, the hallway, the color of the walls," Gioacchini said. "It's like, 'OK, this is where I left last, what, eight or nine years ago.' It was an emotional moment. I didn't tear up, but I was on the verge of it, because I've been through a lot since then.
"Coming through the city, I didn't recognize it almost at all. There's so many new buildings, everything looks so renewed. Coming from the highway, I saw some soccer fields. Back when I was little, soccer fields were rare in Kansas City. You saw mostly baseball and football, the common American sports. Now you see so many soccer fields, and you're like, 'Wow, what a change.' "
Gioacchini said USMNT training has prevented him from being able to see the sights and visit old friends, but he'll try to do those things once he gets a day off. One of those old acquaintances is Jay Burgess, his former Orange Stars coach.
The Gioacchinis went to school with Burgess' son at Community School #1 on State Line Road in Overland Park, which closed last year. Nicholas and his brother, Christiano, tagged along with the Orange Stars for two years.
Burgess recalled that Gioacchinis was a "hard worker" as a grade-schooler. The coach was just glad Nicholas and his brother were sticking around and having a blast from week to week.
"The key with the kids around there, in my opinion, was to just make sure they were enjoying soccer and learning the basics," Burgess said. "So we tried really hard to teach them the fundamentals and make sure that they wanted to come to practice next week."
Westcarr recalled a story about Burgess from shortly before the family left for Italy. Burgess' son had also played baseball, and the coach told Westcarr that he was going to have him focus solely on the diamond sport from now on. He'd thought his son had some soccer talent ... but then he realized the skills Nicholas possessed.
"I'm paraphrasing here, so he said to me, 'I've been coaching for a few years. And I thought my son was a good player until I saw your son,'" Westcarr recalled. "... That stood out because he was using my son as a barometer at the age of 8. So it told me something was different."
The family's move abroad was spurred by Nicholas' Italian father finding work in Italy. Gioacchini struggled to adjust and felt homesick, but today he looks back fondly at the three years he spent there. Without the adversity he experienced in Italy, he said, it's possible he wouldn't be at the point he is now.
"Just the difficulty from moving from country to country, from city to city, when you're young you take it for granted ..." Gioacchini said. "You move there, you don't have much of a choice. Just life takes you and you just have to adapt to a lot of things and a lot of problems on the football pitch with players, coaches and some clubs. It's not a straight line or a sprint to the top, it's a marathon."
After living those three years in Italy, then spending four years with his family in Maryland, Gioacchini — by then a fairly mature 15-year-old — moved to France, where he was snapped up by the youth academy of second-division team Paris FC. That's where where Gioacchini's career really progressed; he moved from the Paris FC second team to the second team of Caen, the team with which he eventually signed his first pro deal in December 2019.
Gioacchini has nine goals in 50 appearances for Caen, helping the club escape the Ligue 2 relegation playoffs on goal difference last season. Watch him play now, and you'll see the introverted kid become what Westcarr calls a "predator."
"Niko was very shy in Overland Park coming up, and even when we got to Italy, but when he stepped across that line, he was no longer that same kid," Westcarr said.
"I remember vividly thinking to myself, This is my son. He wasn't the same person when he stepped across that line. That shy kid was gone, and he was about scoring."
Training for the past week at the Compass Minerals National Performance Center in Kansas City, Kan., Gioacchini said the camaraderie with his American teammates has been stellar.
"Great group of guys," Gioacchini said. "It'll take some time to really connect on the pitch. We don't know each other enough ... but in terms of off-the-field connection, I have no doubt that we will all connect so well. ... Sometimes, it's hard to get along with players, especially when I was in France, it wasn't as easy especially being a foreigner. Now you head back home, you see guys from where you're from around the country, and it just flows through."
While Gioacchini hopes to hear his name called by Berhalter sometime Sunday evening (it would be his fourth international cap, if he appears in the game), two people in the stands will be just as eager: Westcarr and Burgess.
The two have remained in contact through social media as Westcarr travels the world with her son. Westcarr was scheduled to fly into KCI on Saturday, and it'll be the first time the two see each other in person in more than a decade.
The Orange Stars first brought them together. This weekend, it'll be the red, white and blue.
"To remember the grade-school grassy field that we started on at 7 or 8 years old," Burgess said, "and then to see him at (Children's Mercy Park) with all the other big names that are going to be out there and playing internationally, it's going be to be a very special moment."
