When Giovanni Savarese was 18 years old, his life was at a crossroads.



He grew up in Venezuela but had recently moved to Italy, where he attended school and played for a club team in the Promozione level, far down the Italian soccer pyramid. His parents, who were originally from Italy, had recently moved back there, but Savarese, who was then known by friends and family as Gianni, wasn’t ready to settle down.



He felt there had to be other opportunities awaiting him in soccer and he needed to grab them—even if those opportunities existed on another continent in one of the few countries that had yet to embrace the beautiful game.



“I told my dad one day: ‘Dad, can you buy me a plane ticket? Tomorrow I’m going to the United States,’” Savarese, now 47, recalls. “My father told my mother I was crazy.”



Up until a year before, the United States hadn’t been on Savarese’s radar as a place...