Club Brugge arrive at San Siro with the profile of a side that has made a habit of looking beyond its station. The Belgian champions face Inter carrying youth, goals and a few personal threads that lead back to Italy: Nicolò Tresoldi’s early football near Gubbio, Yann Sommer’s return to the club where he won two Scudetti, and a 17-year-old midfielder still weighing an international future between Italy and Australia.
The coach and the club
Ivan Leko’s Brugge are built around a notably young squad. Only three members are older than 30: former Inter goalkeeper Sommer, captain Hans Vanaken and central defender Brandon Mechele. Vanaken has spent more than a decade at the club and is approaching 600 appearances, giving an otherwise youthful group an established voice in the dressing room.
The champions of Belgium have begun the new campaign with purpose. They sit second in the league behind Gent, having won six of their first seven domestic matches. Their wider record includes defeat to Union Saint-Gilloise in the Super Cup and a recent Champions League loss to Aston Villa, while their overall tally stands at 22 goals in all competitions. Their latest league outing brought a 4-0 away win over La Louvière.
Last season’s title was shaped by Tresoldi’s 20 goals and by Aleksandar Stankovic, named the outstanding player of the championship-winning campaign. This term, Tresoldi and Hugo Vetlesen have each scored four times, although Tresoldi has also been credited with five goals across the season in the build-up to the Inter match.
Leko has used a 4-2-3-1, with Jan Virgili operating from the left. The 20-year-old winger joined from Mallorca in a €13 million deal, with €5 million going to Barcelona, where he had previously spent time. From Vilassar de Mar, near Mataró, Virgili has been compared locally to a “little Yamal”, though the comparison is best treated cautiously. He has produced two goals and one assist in eight matches for Brugge, while scoring twice in three appearances for Spain Under-21.
The youngest player to receive senior minutes under Leko is Tian Nai Koren, the 2009-born attacking midfielder who has appeared in four short cameos. He is also Slovenia’s youngest ever debutant, having reached that landmark at 16 years and 308 days, surpassing Benjamin Sesko’s former record.
Italian paths within the Brugge group
Tresoldi returns to Italy with a story that did not begin in one of the country’s biggest academies. At 13, he scored 12 goals in a season for ASD Fontanelle of Gubbio. He attended trials with Milan, Fiorentina, Juventus and other clubs, but no major side made a decisive move. Marco Bedini, his only coach in Italy, was among those who backed him during a period when Tresoldi divided his time between football and tennis.
A family move to Hanover, prompted by his mother’s work, changed the direction of his career. He has since represented Germany at Under-21 level, recording 16 goals in 21 games. San Siro will be his first appearance at the Meazza.
Sommer, meanwhile, faces the club he served during two Italian title-winning seasons. His experience stands in contrast to a Brugge group in which development is a central theme rather than a slogan.
That is also apparent in Gianluca Okon-Engstler. The 17-year-old, born in Sydney, has been with Brugge since 2020 and has so far played for the second team while awaiting a first senior appearance. He is the son of Paul Okon, the former Lazio and Fiorentina midfielder who played alongside Christian Vieri at Marconi Stallions in Australia before continuing his career in Belgium. Gianluca’s brother Paul Jr has played at a World Cup for Australia, while Gianluca has featured for both Italy Under-16 and Australia Under-16, and the same has been true at Under-17 level. His senior international choice remains open.
Vetlesen, Tsawa and the wider Brugge story
Vetlesen brings another strand of continental experience. The Norwegian midfielder, at Brugge since 2023, previously belonged to the Bodø/Glimt side that made its European reputation through a series of striking results. He scored against Roma in the first leg of their 2022 Europa League quarter-final.
His time in northern Norway also produced a more unusual memory. During a team-building outing, players were challenged to catch the largest salmon, and Vetlesen landed a fish weighing two kilograms. He recalled a visit to one of the country’s most dangerous rivers, saying that a fall there would leave little chance of survival, while the group also saw eagles.
Vetlesen, whose father is Norwegian and whose mother comes from La Rochelle in south-west France, had already scored five goals in 10 matches this season. Away from the pitch, he was also behind the camera for Erling Haaland’s rap video, a project that reached millions of viewers online.
Cheveyo Tsawa, signed from Zürich during the summer, represents another product of Switzerland’s long-term talent programme. He entered that pathway at 14 alongside Romano, before their international routes separated: Romano chose Italy, while Tsawa has remained with Switzerland. The midfielder has 10 appearances and one goal for Switzerland Under-21.
Brugge therefore come to Milan with more than one obvious danger. Vanaken supplies continuity, Sommer knows the surroundings, Tresoldi has a personal return to make, and the younger players are being asked to sustain the standard set by last season’s champions. For Inter, the evening is not simply about a visiting Belgian side; it is about a club trying to turn a title-winning year into a longer European chapter.
