Gold Cup games in KC? It’s homecoming for this U.S. Men’s National Team soccer player
.jpg "Nicholas Gioacchini (back row, far left) played for Blue Valley Soccer Club when he was young, and his specific team was the Orange Stars, coached by Jay Burgess.")
Stepping off the plane at Kansas City International Airport, Nicholas Gioacchini sized up his surroundings.
The curved concourse with the dotted, midnight-blue floor and gray stone walls reminiscent of the 1970s brought back a flood of memories for the 20-year-old. It all still looked much like it did when he last saw it 12 years ago.
He inhaled a deep breath of Midwestern air. It smelled just as he remembered, too.
“I’m being serious,” Gioacchini said. “It’s a great feeling. It warms up my heart.”
For the first time since he was 8, when he and his family moved to Italy, Gioacchini is back in his hometown of Kansas City. The last time he was in KC, he was wearing the jersey of the Orange Stars, his youth soccer team.
This time around, he’ll be pulling on the jersey of the U.S. Men’s National Team.
Gioacchini, now playing in France with second-division team Stade Malherbe Caen, was named to the United States’ 23-player Gold Cup roster last week.
He’ll play on the right wing and as a forward for the Stars and Stripes. He practiced in both positions during the club’s first training session at the Pinnacle complex in Kansas City, Kan., Tuesday morning and scored two goals as a forward against Panama in a November friendly.
The U.S. plays all three of its group-stage games at Sporting Kansas City’s Children’s Mercy Park starting Sunday against a preliminary-round winner.
“Being able to hopefully play in front of people of my home, my town, is going to be great. It’s going to be fantastic,” he said Tuesday. “Honestly, I couldn’t be happier.”
Born to an Italian father and a Jamaican mother, Gioacchini spent his early years in Overland Park and attended Community School #1, a small private school on State Line Road that closed its doors in 2020.
Gioacchini kicked his first soccer ball when he was in preschool, and that passion quickly grew. He started playing for the Orange Stars when he was 6.
At such a young age, Gioacchini was thinking of making soccer a career.
“I just played soccer for the pleasure,” he said. “I didn’t think about any of the stress, any of the teams, or where I wanted to be. I just saw a ball, saw a bunch of guys playing with a smile on their face, and wanted to feel the same.”
Thanks to subsequent family moves to Italy, Maryland and France, Gioacchini has played the game around the world now. He signed with FC Paris in 2015.
But the Midwest where his heart belongs.
“Kansas City is really home for me,” he said. “I’ve lived in a bunch of places, and on and off the pitch, Kansas City is just home. I just feel back to where I came from and where maybe eventually I belong.”
Along with eating Godfather’s Pizza again and visiting Deanna Rose Farmstead like he did when he was a kid, he wants to see how the Overland Park area has developed.
When his family left KC in 2008, the Scheel’s Soccer Complex on Switzer Road was still under construction. Last time he was here, most of that area was still baseball and football fields.
He attended just one Kansas City Wizards game when he and his family lived here. Back then, the franchise that would re-brand itself as Sporting KC still played at Arrowhead Stadium.
“I see soccer has developed extremely in the last 10 years, and I just want to keep it that way — growing, growing, growing,” Gioacchini said. “Hopefully, maybe by the end of my career, I will bring back some culture and some diversity to the place to make it an even bigger city of soccer, and that is my dream.
“My dream is to really make this the center of soccer in America, if that’s possible.”
This story was originally published July 6, 2021 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Gold Cup games in KC? It’s homecoming for this U.S. Men’s National Team soccer player."