Nicolò Tresoldi will arrive at San Siro on Tuesday as Club Brugge’s striker and Inter’s next Champions League opponent, but his route to one of Italy’s grandest stages began beside a sunflower field outside Gubbio.
Before his move to Germany, Tresoldi spent a season at Fontanelle, a small club set in the Umbrian countryside near Gubbio. In 2016-17, he was only 12 but regularly played against boys two years older in the regional youth league, scoring 12 goals for coach Marco Bedini’s side.
The early returns did not immediately open the doors of Italy’s leading academies. Trials with Atalanta, Milan, Fiorentina, Bologna and Juventus brought repeated rejections, with clubs believing they already possessed players of a comparable level. Yet the young forward would return to Gubbio unaffected and resume scoring.
A centre-forward project from the beginning
Bedini saw a slender player without the physical profile usually associated with a central striker at that age, but chose to use him through the middle. The decision formed part of a shared plan with Tresoldi’s father Emanuele and the club’s youth-sector leadership.
Emanuele Tresoldi, a former centre-back for Atalanta and Ravenna, won the European Under-21 Championship with Italy in 1994. He followed his son’s development discreetly, allowing the coaches to work while remaining a steady presence behind the scenes.
Nicolò had not initially devoted himself fully to football. Tennis was another serious interest, and for a period he combined the racket with his boots, even missing the Esordienti age group as he continued to play tennis. Some football training sessions were also missed while he travelled for trials.
At Fontanelle, however, his impact was apparent in both the eleven-a-side game and futsal. Bedini recalled a player capable of making the difference on either pitch, with a finishing range already familiar to those now watching him in Belgium: instincts in the box, finishes with either foot and headers.
As a Milan supporter, Tresoldi looked up to Filippo Inzaghi and occasionally tried to reproduce his idol’s movements. The coaching staff worked with him on penalty-area positioning and attacking runs, exercises he approached with the same enthusiasm that marked his early years.
Germany, Brugge and a return to San Siro
In the summer of 2017, the family moved to Hannover because of his mother’s work as a cabin-crew manager for an airline. The adjustment to life in Germany was not straightforward, but his family’s support helped him settle and continue his progress.
Those who coached him in Umbria remember a sensitive, cheerful player with a strong collective instinct. In one late league fixture, he prepared a shirt carrying the message “Come on, Carlo” for a team-mate recovering from a shin injury. Fontanelle were 2-0 down at half-time but turned the match around to win 3-2. Tresoldi did not score, yet he proudly displayed the shirt in the dressing room after the final whistle.
He has retained that attachment to his first club, returning from time to time to visit old friends at the Fontanelle ground. His eventual international choice remains open between Italy and Germany, with those close to his beginnings believing it will be a decision guided by feeling rather than calculation.
At Club Brugge, the forward has moved into a different phase of his career. Last season he won the league title and finished as the competition’s leading scorer with 20 goals. The Champions League now brings him to San Siro for the first time, in a meeting with Inter that also carries a personal layer.
“I grew up supporting Milan and I still follow them,” Tresoldi has said. “I owe it all to my grandfather: he supported Milan and was Van Basten’s golf teacher.”
Tuesday’s match will therefore place a lifelong Milan fan in the city’s stadium against the Rossoneri’s rivals, with the boy who once scored beside the sunflowers of Gubbio now carrying Club Brugge’s hopes onto a much larger Italian stage.
