NYC’s AC Milan fanatics show the changing face of US soccer

The game is growing across the United States and membership of the AC Milan Club New York City is booming.

“There weren’t many kids at school that used to follow soccer the way I did. I’d wear the jerseys to school and people didn’t even know what it was. I would wear my AC Milan jersey and they would be like ‘What’s OPEL?’”

Franco Zagari was born in 1982, in the dying days of the United States’ first national soccer league, NASL. Soccer in America was floundering but Franco and his Italian-born father were transfixed by a new super-team rising to dominant Europe. The AC Milan side of the late 1980s and early 1990s is often cited as one of the game’s finest and the success of those glory years was a formative experience for Franco. He grew up in a “heavy Italian culture” that instilled within him a love for soccer that was a rarity in the US.

AC Milan were one of the biggest and most illustrious teams in European soccer but keeping up to date with their successes was not easy for a young Franco. He cherished whatever magazines, newspapers and television footage he could find, taking advantage of a public access network that carried the occasional burst of Italian programming.

“On Sundays they would show the prior week’s La Domenica Sportiva, a highlights show, early in the morning. And then they would go live to one stadium and show one game, usually the most interesting match of the week. That game would be at 8:30 in the morning so every Sunday we’d wake up early, watch soccer and then go to church.”

Three decades on Franco’s bond with AC Milan is just as passionate. The means, however, of expressing that passion have changed. He is one of the leaders of AC Milan Club New York City, a supporters’ group aiming to bring a