I have been following the case of Nicolò Tresoldi with growing alarm.

For he is an Italian footballer who, for reasons I find increasingly difficult to accept, is German.

I don’t even know how this is legal.

The boy was born in Cagliari. Raised in Gubbio. His father is Italian, his mother Argentine of Italian descent. He lived in Italy until his family relocated to Germany in 2018, when he was thirteen.

Thirteen.

An age at which a young man should already have reasonably established opinions about the world and had his bar mitzvah.

Surely Nicolò Tresoldi could have settled the matter of being Italian.

By 2022, he had German citizenship.

Four years.

I’ve been in relationships longer than that and still felt like a trespasser using the bathroom at her parents’ house.

Yet this boy had apparently become German.

At first I thought surely this had to be one of those Qatari World Cup arrangements. Find a Brazilian, expedite the paperwork, tell him he has always loved Doha.

But no.

The Germans had simply made him one of their own. Entirely legally. Four years after he arrived

Is there no concern for cultural self-preservation?

My dirty Italian people are now infiltrating the German national pool, bringing with us our questionable loyalties and the conviction that tax evasion should be protected by UNESCO as an endangered folk tradition.

What has become of German vigilance?

I concede that he went to school there. He learned the language. He made friends. Hannover gave him an education in football, developed him professionally, and helped make him the player he is today.

Wonderful.

But three and a half years after he left Italy, the Azzurri won the European Championship.

He was sixteen.

Am I expected to believe that Nicolò Tresoldi, who had spent virtually his entire childhood in Italy, was sitting in his living room in Germany in July 2021, hoping that England would win?

That Chiellini lifting that trophy at Wembley meant nothing to him?

Please.

I am willing to accommodate many things in this life.

This is becoming difficult.

And I realize that Italy is now asking him to reconsider his international future only after Germany took him through its youth system.

But international football is a strange institution.

We are allowed to have clubs.

We are allowed to have employers.

We are allowed to leave home, live elsewhere, learn other languages, and have a wonderful time abroad.

For some reason, we have now extended this freedom of association to the national team.

I find that troubling.

A club is somewhere you go to work.

A national team is somewhere you go to remember who you are.

I feel that very strongly, perhaps because I have spent my whole life outside Italy.

I was born in Canada.

I have nothing against the place. There is much to admire. I have several complaints, of course, but nobody has asked.

It is a young country, still negotiating the question of what exactly it is, and one of its great features is that it allows people like me to maintain an attachment to somewhere else.

I have taken considerable advantage of this.

My family was Italian before Canada had any reason to concern itself with us.

There were generations of people who lived and died in little towns, speaking the language, eating the food, fighting the wars, marrying one another, producing more Italians, eventually producing me.

I should think it a great insult to this considerable genealogical undertaking if, after all that, I decided to become German because the facilities in Hannover were nice.

The Italian national team gives me a place in a story that started long before I was born.

I would rather play thirty seconds of a friendly against San Marino for Italy, tear my ACL, meniscus, MCL and whatever other ligaments remain available, and be stretchered off singing the anthem than win a World Cup for Canada.

And I have already torn my ACL, so I know what I am offering.

This is a serious proposal.

I appreciate that other people have different relationships with national identity.

Take Lamine Yamal.

In 2022, when Morocco eliminated Spain from the World Cup, a fifteen-year-old Yamal was filmed in the dressing room at La Masia wearing a Moroccan jersey, savouring the occasion at Spain’s expense.

His father is Moroccan.

The boy was born and raised in Spain.

He eventually chose Spain.

Fair enough.

And I know what you’re thinking.

He was just having a laugh. Taking the piss with the lads. Surely we needn’t read so much into the behaviour of a fifteen-year-old boy.

Please.

He was gloating.

He had just watched the country of his father eliminate the country of his birth, and he was positively delighted. He put on the shirt. He celebrated. In case there was any ambiguity about where his sympathies lay, he was kind enough to remove it.

It is unnatural to pull against your father.

And I cannot help but suspect that, given the choice, the boy would rather win a World Cup for Morocco. Instead, he has been condemned to the miserable consolation of winning both the European Championship and the World Cup for Spain before his twentieth birthday.

Poor child.

My heart bleeds.

If I were Spanish, I would be disgusted.

Of course, I say this as a man born in Canada, a country that has treated me well, all while harbouring a foreign allegiance and regarding the land of my birth with a certain casual disloyalty. Canada has been exceedingly good to my family. I have repaid this generosity by becoming, in matters of national sentiment, something of an Italian sleeper agent. There is a certain ingratitude in this which is not lost on me.

But I am Italian, so I have no interest in investigating the matter further.

They are happy to look the other way. He is happy to win trophies and be celebrated as a national hero. Spain has an extraordinary footballer, albeit one who once savoured its demise and now appears perfectly content to use the Spanish flag as a vehicle for personal glory.

But I digress. Let us move on.

What troubles me about Tresoldi is that he was already Italian.

He left.

His mother had a job opportunity in Germany.

That is how the whole thing happened.

His father has even explained that they might have moved to Liverpool instead.

Liverpool!

Are you telling me that we could now be discussing Nicolò Tresoldi’s emotional attachment to England because his mother’s employer happened to have an opening in Merseyside?

Must the entire international identity of an Italian boy be determined by vacancies in civil aviation?

It is an administrative absurdity.

And there is the matter of his father.

Emanuele Tresoldi.

An Italian footballer.

A former Atalanta player.

A member of the Italian team that won the European Under-21 Championship in 1994.

The very same competition that his son now wishes to finish with Germany.

I am finding this increasingly personal.

Because we have seen this story before, only in reverse.

Giuseppe Rossi.

Born in New Jersey to Italian parents. Raised in America. Offered an opportunity to represent the United States, a country that had given him everything.

He chose Italy.

His father, Fernando, had maintained the connection to the homeland, and Giuseppe understood it from childhood.

A beautiful thing.

A son carrying the flag of his parents back across the ocean.

We received him gladly.

Now, apparently, the bill has come due.

The Germans have found an Italian boy whose family moved to Hannover, and they intend to keep him.

Perhaps this is karma.

Perhaps the Americans have finally sent an invoice.

I reject the transaction.

In any case, what makes the Tresoldi affair especially maddening is the apparent lack of competitive advantage in his hesitation.

Germany is a great footballing nation.

So are we.

We have each won four World Cups.

Admittedly, we have lately developed a habit of watching them from home.

But these are temporary administrative difficulties.

The country remains.

The shirt remains.

We have suffered a great deal in recent years, and we could use a little help.

And even if Germany were winning every World Cup while Italy found itself below the Vatican City in the FIFA rankings, what difference should that make?

Am I to abandon my country because it has become bad at football?

What kind of arrangement is that?

If Brazil offered me the number ten shirt tomorrow, I would thank them for the extraordinary misunderstanding and decline.

I cannot become Brazilian.

I could learn Portuguese. I could move to São Paulo. I could even develop a very convincing Brazilian accent and start dancing at inappropriate moments.

But I would remain an Italian man committing an elaborate fraud.

There are plenty of opportunities to pretend to be somebody else in ordinary life.

International football should offer some relief from this.

Tresoldi now plays for Club Brugge. He is developing into an excellent striker.

Italy wants him.

Germany wants him.

Jürgen Klopp has even spoken to him.

I understand the appeal.

Klopp is a charming man.

A wonderful personality.

He will put his arm around you, laugh, tell you how much he believes in you.

Very difficult to refuse.

But eventually you must look that man in the eye and say:

Jürgen, forgive me.

I have to go home.

I am going to spend the next decade trying to win a World Cup with Domenico Berardi.

Please respect my decision.

And this is where the situation becomes completely deranged.

Tresoldi has reportedly decided to postpone his senior international allegiance until after the 2027 European Under-21 Championship.

He wants to finish the tournament with his boys.

He made a promise to the German coach.

He does not wish to abandon them.

A lovely sentiment.

Fuck them.

You have an opportunity to represent Italy at the senior level, and you are worried about finishing a youth tournament?

It is like Anne Hathaway arriving at your door, personally requesting your company, and you saying:

Anne, I would love to.

But I have already paid for Pornhub Premium through July.

I would hate to waste the subscription.

Please understand.

I have made a commitment.

There comes a point where loyalty to one’s existing arrangements becomes a form of madness.

I understand friendship.

I understand honouring promises.

But there are larger obligations in life.

And frankly, the German boys will survive.

They have a country of eighty million people.

They will find someone.

Emanuele, meanwhile, has said that Nicolò will decide with his heart.

That he feels Italian.

That there are bonds of gratitude to Germany which cannot be ignored.

And that his son must ultimately be allowed to choose.

Very progressive.

Very modern.

But sir, with respect, you won the European Under-21 Championship for Italy.

Your son has already helped Germany eliminate Italy from the same competition.

At what point does a father intervene?

I would have him back in Gubbio immediately.

Nothing dramatic.

No lectures.

Bring him home for the summer.

Have him attend a wedding.

A proper wedding.

Get the whole family together. Have somebody bring out the old photographs. Let his grandmother feed him until he becomes physically unfit for international competition.

Find a lovely girl from the neighbourhood who remembers him from childhood.

Have her say, innocently, how nice it is to see him again.

Let the boy remember what he has left behind.

Take him through the town.

Show him the church.

At some point an elderly man should approach him, touch his face, and say something incomprehensible about having known his grandfather.

That should do it.

We must make him feel the weight of the place.

Return to Zion, young man.

And by Zion, I mean Gubbio.

You can run, but you cannot hide.

Because I do understand Germany’s claim on him.

He grew up there during important years. He learned football there. The friendships are real. German citizenship is real.

I have considered the German position carefully.

I find it insufficient.

And people will tell me that the Italian federation has mishandled this.

Fine.

They probably have.

They should have called earlier. They should have made the boy feel wanted. They should have sent someone to Bruges with flowers and a written apology.

I accept all of this.

But I cannot believe we have reached a point where the responsibility for being Italian lies with the Italian Football Federation.

What an extraordinary burden to place upon an organization that can barely organize a World Cup qualification campaign.

Surely there must be some things that survive the incompetence of the FIGC.

A young man must take responsibility for his own country.

His family, too.

There is something that should be passed down, something that should be understood without requiring a telephone call from Roberto Mancini.

I am aware that there are people born to immigrant families who genuinely belong to the countries in which they were raised. I would welcome someone who has made Italy his home if wishes to represent it.

I hope every player who wears the shirt feels something profound when he puts it on.

But I cannot accept the idea that international football should become another calculation about where one might enjoy the best professional opportunities.

We have enough of that in club football.

There must be some room left for sentiment.

For an irrational attachment to a place.

And it is not lost on me that a man may develop ties to two countries.

Of course he may.

You lived in Germany. You have an affinity for the Christmas markets. Wonderful. You went to India one summer and developed a profound appreciation for the Kama Sutra. I congratulate you.

Enjoy the world.

But you have a home.

And you must always be prepared to answer when it calls.

Stop stepping out on your wife, Nicolò.

You may protest that you never married Italy, that no vows were exchanged.

Nonsense.

Your ancestors made them on your behalf.

And I am not convinced the Germans particularly need you to become overcome with patriotic fervour, either. German national pride is a delicate historical matter. If they start singing the anthem a little too enthusiastically, I imagine even the Germans begin to worry.

But Italy?

You hear Fratelli d’Italia, and something should happen to you.

You should remember who you are.

Your father. His father. The little town. The centuries of people who made your existence possible.

You may sing the German anthem beautifully, Nicolò.

I have no objection.

But I want you to cry when you hear ours.

Tresoldi is entitled to make his own decision.

Of course he is.

But I am entitled to be profoundly dissatisfied with it.

I have considered the German position. I have considered his childhood, his friendships, his education. I am willing to let him retain his German citizenship. He may even keep a house there, should he wish. A nice house. With a garden. Raise a family, take the children to Oktoberfest, enjoy the beer halls.

I have no intention of depriving the boy of Germany.

I merely wish to relieve Germany of the impression that he is German.

There must be limits.

Italy had him for thirteen years, and his family for considerably longer than that, if we are prepared to include his ancestors, which I am.

Germany has had him for eight.

I should think the arithmetic favours us.

And yes, perhaps he feels German. Perhaps he has developed a genuine affection for the place. Perhaps he hears Deutschlandlied and feels something move inside him.

Fine.

But surely when Fratelli d’Italia comes on, he ought to become briefly unwell.

Some ancestral disturbance.

A sudden recollection of Gubbio.

His father in the Azzurri shirt.

A grandmother appearing before him like the Virgin Mary, asking why he has done this to the family.

Something.

I am not asking the boy to suffer.

I simply want the appropriate amount of suffering to accompany his decision.

And I would like Emanuele to intervene.

The man won the European Under-21 Championship for Italy.

His son is now refusing to consider Italy until he has finished playing in the European Under-21 Championship for Germany.

What a development.

There should be a family meeting.

Nothing aggressive.

A little conversation.

Perhaps a priest could attend.

We need to remind the boy that he is Italian. This should take no longer than an afternoon.

I am prepared to contribute if necessary, although I should hope the family could settle the matter privately.

Because I have other responsibilities.

I am trying to establish an Italian school in Montreal.

The Republic has a great many problems, and I have already taken it upon myself to address several of them.

I cannot spend the rest of my life retrieving centre-forwards from the German youth system.

Nicolò Tresoldi is from Gubbio.

I am from Montreal.

I should not have to be the one explaining this.

Nicolò Tresoldi, Please Come Home was originally published in Thought Thinkers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Hey.”

Sue looks up from her text conversation.

“If you ever need a place to get away,” Venus continues, “you can come here.”

Sue nods while fighting back the tears. Her parents are going through a divorce and Sue is stuck in the middle, one of many young adults stuck in pre-launch. “Thanks,” is all she can manage. Venus puts her arm around Sue in a side-hug before they both walk back to the dice strewn on the table.

That was when I realized this was more than a game.

All of them have said as much. Sue continues to find acceptance as a transgender woman. Mark is thankful for a safe place, both for him and, perhaps more importantly, his son. Rick talks about his anxiety diminishing when he arrives. Venus is just happy to make a difference in the lives of others again.

Those who can afford it take turns making sure everyone gets fed, and the arguments never become personal, even when they play a character that would make it personal.

And all the while, I marveled at everything taking place around me, a random collection of young and old, male and female, and from every creed, religion and ideology imaginable. Aside from wanting to play a tabletop role-playing game, they all had one thing in common.

They were looking for someplace to belong.

I knew the feeling.

If it hadn’t been for Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), I might have never found a place to belong either.

I’ve always been different.

I was never a popular kid in school. Many of my interests were not shared by my peers: chess, reading fiction, and the most taboo of all, enjoying academics. “Nerd” was the label branded on me without my consent, in an era before geekiness was cool and being a “nerd” still came with the same social stigma it does today.

Nerds are exiled individually, all looking in from the outside on a world they don’t fit in (although some fool themselves into thinking they fit…maybe I’m projecting). In spite of their exile, nerds are still human and they do what all humans do: they form social groups with other outcasts.

One center of gravity was D&D. For me, it was the only form of social interaction that didn’t include a ball (unlike most nerds, I enjoyed sports). I was introduced early in my adolescence and it became a staple hobby, filling up many empty weekend afternoons.

J Street would show me that D&D was for more than just nerds.

“J Street” was a single family residence next door to the Catholic church where I grew up, an irony considering what was about to transpire. It belonged to the brother of a new friend I met through a new job, one that had already taken me on a wild ride through the shadows of the world.

On my first visit, I remember he stopped me at the threshold of the front door. I could hear the pandemonium on the other side.

“We’re heading for my room,” he said bluntly. “Follow close, and move when I move.” Without stopping to see if I understood, he opened the door.

From the entryway, I could observe the broken furniture scattered about. A partition wall separated the living room from the kitchen, with two openings on either side of the wall. The wall was the infield of a NASCAR track and the inhabitants were the racers, endlessly steering to the left as they whooped and hollered.

I jumped back to avoid one of the drivers crashing into turn three in front of our feet.

My friend waited for a break in the traffic before scurrying across the track, dashing forward and to the right towards his bedroom. I followed instructions, narrowly escaping the next pile-up.

This is but one example of life on meth, kids. Don’t try this at home (unless you want to replace the furniture).

My friend and I were no angels but we shared a different drug of choice, just a couple of pot-heads who liked to nerd out over a chessboard. Over the next year, we would stay hidden whenever we hung out at his place, venturing out of our hide only when it was necessary and the coast was clear. This was achieved by first pressing one’s ear to the door and listening for the wild animals on the other side.

All races eventually come to an end, and none may be more dramatic than a meth crash. As with so many, the brother looked in the mirror one day and was shocked at the image. Many observe the change, but few ever traverse the recovery. My friend’s brother was determined to be one of the few.

The hard part about recovering from drug use is often not the addiction itself. Detox is hell but, with good treatment, anyone can white-knuckle their way through it if they want too. The true challenge is what comes afterwards, and it often comes in the same recognizable way: that one friend you used to get high with shows up and, after reminiscing about the past, tempts you with an offer for one more ride, “for ol’ times sake.” It’s often not the drug that pulls you back in, but the puppet holding the rope.

How, then, do you recover from an addiction when your house is where everyone goes to party?

First, you let the word out on the street that you’re going away on vacation.

Next, you triple-lock the doors while blacking out all the windows.

Last, you assign one trusted person to deliver all necessities while you disappear for six months.

I dunno. I haven’t seen him. I don’t know when he’s coming back. It was easy for me to keep up the charade because I wasn’t there to see the brother.

I couldn’t help but watch, though. Like I said before, detox is hell, especially when you can’t afford the cost of good treatment in the United States.

After a couple of weeks, the brother and his friend detoxing with him were experiencing the gentle euphemism of “cabin fever.” A couple of guys, who could end their suffering through a simple phone call, needed a distraction.

“Have you ever played D&D?”

The friend curled his lip slightly at the idea of playing such a nerdy game, but the brother had no such reservations: I could have proposed throwing dung at the wall and he would have been game. My friend joined in and they made characters, all while I took the Dungeon Master (DM) chair.

It would become a full-time job for the next six months. Soon, another friend fleeing the same conditions would join us. While my parents wrung their hands over their college-aged son foregoing school to hang out at “that house” next door to their church, a miracle was taking place, one that would never be recognized as canon.

The addiction was overcome. But the miracle did not stop there.

Over the ensuing years, the players and needs would change, but the game and the purpose did not. J Street became a sanctuary for young people to escape whatever evil lurked outside. Many would pass through that house, and some lives were changed forever, with a blast impact far exceeding its neighborhood.

For me, it was an education, not only about both the evils outside and the broken humanity within, but also about learning to facilitate the need we all share: social connection, one not mediated by a device.

As with all RPG groups, life breaks up the party. Family concerns removed me from the DM chair, and although others stepped up to take my place, the players eventually formed families of their own. Kids and their games replaced our games as the devices we used for connection became obsolete. I spent the next few decades missing both the game and the environment while I consigned the memories to the dust bin.

Yet, there was another revival to come.

I tried so hard to find it again but it was to no avail.

It felt like losing a former lover of whom no one would ever quite fill the void. I sought the same communal experience in workplaces, churches, bars, volunteer opportunities and organized events. Some were bad, some were good, but none quite filled that longing for the connection I once had.

I even tried to recreate such environments as a professional but the results were dismal. No matter where I went, people were too afraid to drop their performance and be real with each other. The social pressure to perform in accordance with whatever self-selected standard they imposed upon themselves always overshadowed simply being human, flaws and all.

As the years wore on, the friends dwindled while the loneliness increased.

“Fuck it,” I said one day, after my latest excursion was bankrupted. “I’m going to look for a new D&D group.” I figured that, although it may not be the same as what I once had, it would at least be some form of social interaction.

I visited a gaming store in town and immediately felt like life had passed me by. Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon and Magic The Gathering dominated the shelves while a younger generation dominated the aisles and meeting rooms. This old nerd with gray hair felt silly, but I was determined not to let fear get in the way of something I once loved.

There was still one dedicated shelf to role-playing games and D&D dominated the section. After swapping stories of campaigns of winters past, the shopkeeper told me of a new DM looking for players. I know the challenge of sitting in the chair and I wanted to be supportive. I bought the new edition of the player’s book along with some dice before signing up.

It felt weird at first, sitting around a gaming table with a group of people at least half my age, but I decided to ignore it. It didn’t take long for them to ignore it either. Ages, genders, races and whatever else people use to divide themselves from their neighbors are not a factor when everyone is pretending to be somebody else.

Playing again reawakened that old itch to create. One of the best experiences in life is creating a story that others enjoy (can you relate?) and throughout my time at J Street, there was one story I never got the chance to reveal, the one I vowed to write if I ever got the chance again. Maybe, after many months, this new group would give me the chance to tell it? I bought the rest of the tools and started crafting.

As with any social gathering, families are only one challenge among many. Health is oftentimes another, and when the new DM had to bow out after many missed sessions (no DM, no game) I suddenly found myself in a group with no leader.

“I have a story. Can I DM?”

The group said “yes”, but not before a few more random players joined the game. Consistency is the key to gelling a group and, after a few sessions, one player offered her home. Another offered to bring dinner. And then another.

Side conversations broke out during breaks in the action and over food. Players began to tell their stories, their backgrounds, and their experiences after they shared the character backgrounds they created. This sharing led to two realizations.

One, we’re all broken here.

Two, each of us needed a safe place where being broken was okay, and nobody was trying to fix us.

This wasn’t just a game.

This was healing, the breath of fresh air that people living in digital tombs need, the kind of revival that doesn’t require a noisy church choir or a tithe. No purpose and no plan, other than to enjoy each other’s company and feel, for perhaps the first time for some, what it’s like to be accepted in a safe space.

Sanctuary isn’t located in houses or on lettered streets. Instead, it is created by the people inside of it, using a kitchen table as an anchor. In a world demanding a flawless performance just to survive, a tabletop RPG offers a strange kind of mercy, a chance to trade the performative mask for a fictional one in which failure is not a disaster, but only a roll of the dice and part of the fun.

Who knew the answer was presented to me when I was a child?

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to flirt with the bartender,” Sue proclaims.

Everybody groans. Sue shirks back a bit, afraid she has committed a social faux-pas. “Too dramatic?” she says. The group shakes their heads.

“No!” Venus responds. “But how are we going to find the location of the kidnapped girl if you’re always flirting with the bartender!”

“Oh,” Sue says, with a sheepish grin. “You’re right. Okay,” as she turns to me, “my character doesn’t say anything.”

“That’s nice,” I say, trying hard to suppress my growing grin, “but unfortunately for you, the bartender had the same thought about you! And her charisma check…” as I pause to roll, “says she’s quite charming!” Venus throws up her hands while the table breaks down in uproarious laughter.

“I just want to say something,” I say as I wipe away a tear. “Have you guys ever seen the movie Don’t Look Up?” A few nods. “Well, if the apocalypse was tomorrow, I think I’ve found my dinner group.”

“Awwwwww” everyone says in unison, before Mark’s son Alvin recognizes an opening.

“Grandpa having a sentimental senior moment?”

This sets off a new round of dissing, witty comebacks and laughter. It makes the game slow but nobody minds. I meant every word, but I’m waiting for the right moment to tell them something else.

I’m not stopping here.

I want to form another group. And perhaps another after that.

And if those groups split off and form more groups?

Maybe an answer to this loneliness we all feel can be grown and spread. Revivals have started with less.

“So, what’s next?” Mark says after the laughter and commotion settles down. I smile.

“Roll Initiative.”

J Street and the Great RPG Revival was originally published in Thought Thinkers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.