Serie A is enjoying the fruits of another influx of British players

By Ian King

Indeed if anything, we’re going through something of a golden age for players from the British Isles going to play in that particular country, something not seen since the 1980s and 1990s. 

At present there are fourteen players from the UK in the first team squads of Serie A clubs, and perhaps even more surprising than this is that five of them – more than a third – are from Scotland. As well as Gilmour and McTominay, there’s also Lewis Ferguson, who’s the captain of Bologna, Liam Henderson of Empoli, and Che Adams at Torino.

With no representatives from Wales or Northern Ireland the other nine players are all English, and they’re a curious bunch, ranging from new signings to squad players and a couple of first team regulars. A total of nine clubs out of the twenty in the division have a player from England, Scotland or both. 

The club in the deepest with English players is Milan, who currently have Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Fikayo Tomori, as well as Tammy Abraham on loan from Roma. It has to be said that Milan haven’t had a very strong start to the season. They’re currently 6th in Serie A and have lost both of their first two matches in the Champions League group stage. 

With eight games of the league season having been played, Tomori and Loftus-Cheek have both been ever-present in the league while Abraham has only missed one game. None of the three were selected by Lee Carsley for the England squad for the current round of Nations League matches against Greece and Finland. 

Milan are the only one of the traditional big three of Italian football to have any British players whatsoever; neither Inter or Juventus have any. Clubs of this size want their players from the elite end of the spectrum, but neither really quite have pockets quite deep enough to justify throwing a nine figure sum at a young English starlet. 

One place above Milan are Udinese, who feature Keinan Davis, who ran up almost 150 appearances for Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Watford before leaving for Udine in the summer of 2023. He only made eight appearances last season but has already featured in six of their seven Serie A games so far. 

Napoli lead the current table, their spine infused with steel produced by the Men of the Clyde, but what of the other Scots? Che Adams has had a reasonably successful start to life with Torino, with three goals in his seven Serie A appearances. His team are in 7th place in the table, level on points with Milan. Lewis Ferguson is now in his third season with Bologna, where he is the captain. 

Liam Henderson, meanwhile, is the most travelled of them all. He hasn’t played in Scotland since falling out of favour at Celtic and only making one appearance throughout the whole of the 2017/18 season. Since then he’s carved himself out a decent journeyman career in Italy, with spells at Bari, Hellas Verona, Lecce and Palmero, as well as three spells with Empoli, where he’s currently playing. Empoli are 10th in the table, a point behind Milan and Torino. 

Henderson has been joined at Empoli this season by Tino Anjorin, who signed for the club during the summer after finally giving up the ghost of being given much of a chance by Chelsea. He only made one Premier League appearance for them, and was sent out on loan to Lokomotiv Moscow, Huddersfield Town and Portsmouth before Italy beckoned. He’s made four league appearances for them so far, which is four times as many chances as he ever got at Stamford Bridge. 

Two places above Empoli – though the teams are tied on points and only separated on goal difference by one goal – are Atalanta. Ben Godfrey left Everton for Bergamo in the summer for £10m after four years at Goodison Park, but has only made one appearance for last year’s Europa League winners so far, though he did also play the last seven minutes of their opening Champions League match against Shakhtar Donetsk at the start of October and came off the bench against Real Madrid in the UEFA Super Cup as well. 

But of course, football isn’t all about chasing for European places, league titles and glory, and three of the English players currently playing in Italy are very much at the coalface at the moment, fighting a battle against relegation. Bottom of the table Venezia don’t have any British players, but the three clubs above them have one each. 

Separated from the foot of the table by goal difference alone, Monza have Omari Forson, who rejected a new contract with Manchester United after having made four League appearances for them last season, while Brooke Norton-Cuffy, a former Arsenal academy product who was loaned out to Lincoln City, Rotherham, Coventry City and Millwall, is playing for Genoa.

And finally, Samuel Iling-Junior was signed by Aston Villa from Juventus – for whom he played 34 times last season – during the summer and immediately loaned back to Serie A, to play for Bologna. He scored a stoppage-time equaliser for them on his debut away to Como, but has only played twice for them since. 

The reputation of English players abroad is growing. In Germany, Harry Kane is still averaging a goal a game for Bayern Munich, while Conor Gallagher and Jude Bellingham have impressed in Madrid, albeit for different clubs. But it’s Italy that has really invested significantly into English and Scottish players, taking a chance on players who have been happy to take a gamble on travelling in a way that was less common just a generation ago. And why shouldn’t they? It’s better than sitting on the bench in the Championship or slowly drifting from view. By comparison, winter in Italy sounds like quite the career-reviver. 

(Cover image from IMAGO)

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