Italian coach who produced Serie A stars heading to Tacoma

Bernardeschi in action for Fiorentina

New NPSL club FC Tacoma 253 are preparing for their first year. They will join the league’s Northwest Conference in 2015 where Portland Spartans will provide the sole local opponent.

The two clubs will compete against each other for the playoff place but the opposition will be also drawn from the Golden Gate Conference, which as the name suggests draws its clubs from Northern California.

The FC Tacoma 253 club will have a heavy Italian influence. Its owner is Giuseppe Pezzano, the man responsible for bringing the likes of Marco di Vaio and Marco Donadel to Major League Soccer.

But it is the emphasis on producing youth that will characterise the Tacoma side.

ACF Fiorentina’s starlets Khouma Babacar and Federico Bernardeschi are products of Vincenzo Vergine’s coaching methods, which he began at southern club Lecce before he brought them to Fiorentina, known as la Viola, the Violets.

Those of you who follow the English Premier League will know that Southampton have made an extraordinary start to the campaign. There’s a Vergine connection there too. Striker Graziano Pellè started his career as a youth at Lecce where Vergine was his youth coach.

Pellè won the EPL Player of the Month award for September and has already netted against sides such as West Ham, QPR, Sunderland and Newcastle, this weekend’s and the season’s first conquerors of Chelsea.

His goal against QPR was described by the Hoops’ manager and former Sounder Harry Redknapp as ‘world class’. That acts as a segue to a moment over in Serie A in Fiorentina’s Artemio Franchi stadium.

Babacar is a 21-year-old born in Senegal who has started scoring in Serie A. His victims include the cream of the Italian crop such as Inter, against whom he scored the goal below.

Viola coach Vincenzo Montella called him a player who “can only score beautiful goals.”

Federico Bernardeschi is a 20-year-old born in the city of Carrara. Playing as a winger, Bernardeschi has already added six total appearances for the Italian Under 21 side, two in Europa League and four in Serie A.

Both Babacar and Bernardeschi are a product of Fiorentina’s exceptional youth program which was created by Vincenzo Vergine, as Pelle was in Lecce.

Vergine is visiting Tacoma in March next year to apply what he has learned to the players at FC Tacoma 253.

The emphasis is on more than the athletic.

“A great soccer player doesn’t only have good talent. Instead, he is the product of advanced formation that has to be specifically targeted to improve both in the physiological and mental aspects,” Vergine told FC Tacoma253.com

The club is hoping to bring players over from Italy but is very much on the hunt for local talent to augment it.

Any player who wishes to contact the club should email them on info@fctacoma253.com.