Even Venezia wasn’t sure what they would get when they signed Tanner Tessmann from FC Dallas in 2021. The club’s general manager at the time, Alexander Menta, described the midfielder as “my big bet” in an interview with Grant Wahl. He liked Tessman’s size, athleticism and work ethic, but those qualities alone were not enough to become an elite football player. “Was it like a normal purchase with green lights everywhere? “No,” said Menta. “I told him the same thing.”
Tessmann had made his debut for the U.S. men’s national team a few months earlier, but he wouldn’t represent them again until this September. The two and a half years in between were as tortuous as the canals that cut through Venice’s 126 islands. But now, he and his club appear to be finding their way out into the open waters of the lagoon.
Venezia were not expected to reach Serie A, the highest level of Italian football, in 2021. They had not played in a top-flight league for two decades and were only rescued from bankruptcy by a consortium of American investors six years later in Italy’s fourth tier. before. Venezia, who climbed up two leagues in the shortest possible time, were relegated from Serie B in 2019 but received a post-season reprieve after another club, Palermo, ran into their own financial crisis and were relegated to Serie C instead.
The club’s chairman throughout this period was Joe Tacopina, a New York lawyer turned serial Italian football investor who was previously part of ownership groups in Rome and Bologna. It was acquired by fellow shareholder Duncan Niederauer in 2020.
Niederauer, the former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, wanted to take Venezia in a different direction. He and Tacopina shared the belief that the club had the potential to develop a global fan base thanks to its location in a unique city that attracts millions of tourists each year. After all, what could be more romantic than a football team whose stadium, Stadio Pier Luigi Penzo, is easiest to reach by boat?
But their visions of what this would look like differed. After completing his takeover, Niederauer hired Menta, a 29-year-old Venezia supporter from Pennsylvania who had never worked in football before, to run the club’s analytics department.
Menta had cold-called him after reading the news of the takeover and had navigated his way to an opportunity with his knowledge of the field and pure enthusiasm. His player recommendations helped transform a team that was expected to battle relegation into one that instead finished fifth and gained promotion to Serie A in the play-offs.
Tessmann and fellow American Gianluca Busio signed in the following transfer window. Menta identified them based on their potential on the pitch, but of course these moves were also linked to efforts to increase the club’s international appeal.
During his time as president, Tacopina rebranded the club and replaced the winged lion on the crest with a more aggressive depiction. “The old lion says, ‘Welcome visitors to our city; Be safe,’” Tacopina said at the time. “This lion says, ‘Go away or we’ll kill you.’”
This wasn’t the sale Niederauer had in mind. brought back Ted Philipakos as the club’s Chief Brand Officer and Sonya Kondratenko as Media Director; these were two Americans who were part of the Venezia project in previous episodes.
Before the club returns to Serie A in 2021, they switched kit supplier from Nike to Kappa and collaborated to create a collection of four fashionable models. Among the surprising designs was a black home jersey that recreated the trompe l’oeil Venetian wall texture, as seen on the facades around the lagoon.
The marketing campaign that accompanied its launch sold Venezia as a lifestyle brand rather than a football club. So did the opening of a new club store a year later, designed to feel like a high-end fashion boutique and displaying only a handful of carefully selected items. The club used German design agency Bureau Borsche to develop the next set of kits from 2022, as well as a new, stylized club crest. Esquire magazine labeled them Fashion FC.
This rebranding has been quite effective. Philipakos told Esquire that 96% of product sales come from outside Italy. However, achieving success on the field was more difficult. Venezia could not survive even a single season in Serie A and fell to last place at the end of the 2021-22 season.
For both new American players, it was a chastening experience. Busio arrived with higher expectations, having played 65 games for Sporting Kansas City as a 19-year-old and being part of the USMNT’s Gold Cup-winning team that summer. He made a bright start, scoring against Cagliari, but fell out of favor with his team as the season progressed.
Less was required of Tessmann, who made only a handful of appearances for FC Dallas in the year and a half before joining Venezia. He made only six starts in Serie A and received little attention from new manager Ivan Javorčić following his team’s relegation.
This episode was very short. Javorčić was sacked after a dismal 12-game tenure and replaced by Paolo Vanoli. The latter appreciated Tessmann’s physicality but still struggled to find a home for her at first. However, things started to go wrong for the American player after Mato Jajalo, who signed a contract from Udinese to serve as the team’s registrar, ruptured his cruciate ligament in February this year.
Tessmann, who had previously struggled when asked to manage the game from the middle of the midfield trio, was called back to this position as a necessity. He improved unexpectedly and showed the composure and quality that was missing before.
Vanoli explained this improvement as the result of good old-fashioned hard work on the training ground. “I always ask my players,” he said after watching Tessmann score in an impressive 3-2 win over Parma in October. “But you have to be prepared to expect what you want.”
For a while it looked like Busio was on the wrong track, no longer a guaranteed starter due to Venezia finishing eighth in Serie B last season. However, his form this season has been much better, starting alongside Tessmann in 12 of 13 matches. mostly in a box-to-box role. “Gianluca has reached a new cycle,” Vanoli said in September. “Eventually he wants to be a football player. Young players need to learn lessons and sometimes you have to be tough on them. I was with him for a while.”
Tessmann and Busio were called up to the U.S. Men’s Olympic Soccer Team for a training camp in Spain this week. They are only 22 and 21 years old respectively and have a long career ahead of them. But neither appear to be in any rush to leave one of European football’s most extraordinary environments.