The two-time former all-Canadian hopes to earn enough money from her new team to cover her living expenses.

"I'll be paid. I think it'll be better (than Italy). But I won't make any savings off professional women's soccer.

"It's not really something I can do forever. But while I'm young and can keep this going, I don't have to join the real world yet."

Lagonia, who has four caps with Canada's senior national team, hasn't heard anything from head coach John Herdman since she attended an evaluation camp with the nats in December 2012.

No matter.

To her 86-year-old opa's delight, she'll be close enough to her relatives who remained in Germany when he immigrated to Canada decades ago.

Lagonia's tour with Verona at least provided her with the opportunity to learn the local language and to reconnect with her father Carman's aunts who still live there.

One of them, 75-year-old Ofelia Vinante, picked up Alyssa weekly and returned her to Verona good and rightly fed.

"It was a big family event. I kind of felt at home again," says Alyssa, in town recently for her brother Ben's wedding.

Ben Lagonia, a master corporal with the Canadian infantry, is also a world traveller. He had two tours of duty in Afghanistan.

"So, he's our hero, our war veteran," says Alyssa, a Grand River Collegiate grad who was named Canadian university's soccer player of the year in 2011.

crivet@therecord.com