As its teams underachieved and many of the top international players left for other leagues, Italian clubs ceded one of their automatic berths in the Champions League. Italy’s stadiums were aging, the clubs failed to grasp the need for effective marketing and few Serie A teams could be compared to global titans like Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona.

The club’s new owners believe Roma is well positioned to emerge as the next big global brand in soccer. It is a club located at a unique intersection of global culture. The ownership’s idea is to increase revenue by investing in players who deliver results on the field that further increase revenue. Part of the plan is a proposal for a new stadium, tied to Italy’s intention to bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics, to replace the crumbling, fan-unfriendly Stadio Olimpico, where a running track keeps the fans far from the action and another team, Lazio, shares the facility.

“It’s our role to build up the team’s commercial business so it provides our football club the tools to compete consistently at the highest level while also developing a global media platform that allows our worldwide fan base to follow Roma in a highly engaged fashion,” said Pallotta — a part-owner of the Boston Celtics, the head of the Raptor Group and a top hedge-fund manager — in an e-mail. “The building blocks for success include enhancing the game-day experience for our fans — particularly making our existing stadium more family friendly — developing a deeply compelling digital presence, touring the team to the Americas and Asia so fans globally can experience the club first-hand, and ultimately building a new purpose-built stadium in Rome.”

DiBenedetto, an owner of the Boston Red Sox, was also part of the group that bought Liverpool of the Premier League, which could raise questions about a possible conflict with UEFA rules should Liverpool and Roma find themselves playing in the same continental tournament in the future. It would be a nice problem to have.

The club’s management, with Sabatini and Enrique as the point men, has designs on changing the nature of Italian’s soccer’s reputation for a defensive style by transporting Barcelona’s ball-possession style to Rome. Within three years, the young core that often puts five players under 24 in the starting lineup could make Roma a top team in Italy and Europe. But it is the chance to transform the fan experience, which can be sorely lacking in Italy, that has energized the American investors.

As Tacopina shuttles between New York and Rome — from where his father, Cosmo Tacopina, who died at 94 last week, immigrated to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn — the club’s fans have embraced the architect of the entire deal, displaying a banner “Tacopina Uno di Noi, Grazie Joe,” which calls him “One of Us.”