EXCLUSIVE: GOAL spoke with the American-born talent about life, identity, family pride – and the perfect breakfast
"Two bacon, egg, and cheeses, curly fries and a mango smoothie."
That's the order, the one that signifies that Luca Koleosho is back home.
Those visits, admittedly, come less often these days, but that makes them more meaningful. They so often begin with a quick stop at Duchess, a culinary staple that anyone from Connecticut will be eager to tell you all about. Koleosho is no different than anyone else in the Nutmeg State. That trip to Duchess is his slice of home. Those breakfast sandwiches serve as unofficial confirmation that the season is over, and that Koloesho now has the freedom to be himself for a little while.
"Home is still America, but I'm really only allowed to go back maybe once a year, usually when the season ends," he tells GOAL. "When I do get that chance, I go back and get comfortable. I get to do the things I did before. I get to eat what I always ate. I get to go to the places that I've always wanted to go to. When I'm home, I'm going to Duchess."
Back home in Connecticut, Koleosho isn't the young Burnley winger battling for a chance to prove himself in Europe. He's also not the young man straddling multiple identities, the Italian international from America at the center of a dual-national panic among fans of the U.S. men's national team.
Back home, with that BEC in hand, he's Luca, the guy who has had the same Duchess order for as long as he can remember. He gets to be that same kid who loved soccer almost as much as he hated losing. He gets to be an older brother and a son who admits that he is so, so desperate to make his family proud.
At his core, Koleosho is just the same old American kid, but maybe something a bit more, too. Life can be more complicated than that, especially for a professional soccer player who is so often forced to choose. So much of the discussion of Koleosho centers around where he wants to go next and, perhaps more importantly, why he wants to go there.
The son of an Italian-Canadian and a Nigerian-American, it's been a discussion for years. He currently plays for Italy and has established himself as a crucial part of their youth national team setup. The more he continues and the more he succeeds with that Azzurri shirt, the more it looks like his dreams could take him further and further away from America.
Those are things he'll have to address someday. Just 20 years old, Koloesho is focused so much on the short-term. He's focused on a club breakout and, maybe, a senior call-up to Italy. When and if that comes, then he'll have to choose. For now, though, Luca can just be Luca, a person who totally understands himself, but is still figuring out his place in everything around him.
"I don't see it as something that I have to choose one or the other," he says. "I don't have to feel a certain way to balance this all out. I'm just me. I know people get confused by that. 'How can he be four nationalities? How is he this? How is he that?' At the end of the day, though, that's just me.
"I just want people to get to know me, to get to know my personality. I feel like them seeing me more will get them more open to my personality. Sometimes I'm chill, sometimes I have energy. I'm probably goofing off, playing basketball, cracking jokes over pro clubs. I'm normal."
Koloesho's journey is anything but normal, though, and the choices that will ultimately define it won't be normal, either.
GOAL sat down with the Burnley winger to discuss his career so far, how he got here and the difficult decisions ahead.
Getty Images Sport'He hated losing'
Koloesho's first memories of sports are generally of losing. Such was life growing up. There were no handouts and no moral victories. If Koloesho was going to beat someone at something, he had to earn it. In the many moments that he didn't, Kolesoho couldn't take it. It didn't matter that he was a kid; he wanted to win.
"Man, my parents didn't let me win sh*t," he recalls with a laugh. "I was not allowed to win anything. I had to earn it. That's probably why I'm so competitive now. I don't like losing. When I would lose, especially in basketball, I couldn't take it. I would play and play and play until I beat you. I wouldn't let you go inside until I was able to beat you."
According to his mother, Melissa Vallera-Koleosho, lessons were painful, but necessary. Before Luca, she was a soccer star, one whose journey took her from Canada to American colleges to the Western Mass Pioneers in the USL-W League. She was the first-generation daughter of Italian immigrants, raised on soccer and Italian culture during her youth in Montreal.
She was playing and coaching when Luca was born in 2004. She remembers bringing him to games in a stroller so that assistant coaches could watch him when she took the field. Koleosho's father, Olukayode, was no slouch either. He played American football in his youth, and that toughness and competitive spirit translated immediately to his son.
Fostering that competitive spirit, Melissa says, was a challenge.
"He hated losing," Vallera-Koleosho tells GOAL, "and it was hard for him, right? You're young and you're still learning. We had to teach him how to be a good winner, but also to be a good loser because losing is part of it. You can only appreciate success if you know how to fail, right? You're going to lose at some point but he would freak out, and it was like 'OK, this is not appropriate'.
"As he got older, we wanted to make sure he was with the right teams where the coaches wouldn't just praise him because he scored or because he was good. We wanted the coaches to teach him discipline. We were all on board, knowing that we had to foster and channel that competitiveness in a positive way."
That journey has, ultimately, transported the Koleoshos all over the world.
After playing for his local club, Trumbull United, for a few years, he quickly joined up with the Manhattan Kickers, when it became clear that he needed a different sort of challenge, one that was bigger than goals and assists.
From the start, Vallera-Koleosho says her son just seemed different. At eight, he would cut with the ball in ways other kids couldn't. He was good for Trumbull, then good for Connecticut, then good for Manhattan. At some point, the Koleoshos realized that he was good in general.
"Did I know I was going to make it? Bro, at the time, I was a delusional kid, to be honest," Koloesho says. "I was playing up. I was always playing two or three years up. I think that just fast-tracked me."
And that was by design, the intention to put him in competitive environments.
"We never wanted it to be easy," Vallera-Koloesho said. "We always wanted him to work hard. We always tried to put him in the right places to develop and, with my soccer background, I knew that was about finding competitive situations. We were able to go through the right channels, the ones that were the right fit and had the right discipline."
During his time with the Manhattan Kickers, Koleosho was able to take trips to Spain, where the family quickly saw the path forward. For him to learn the lessons he needed to learn and achieve the things he wanted to achieve, Koleosho had to go abroad. He left for Europe at just 11 years old.
AdvertisementGetty Images SportLife in Europe
For American soccer players, a move to Europe can often be challenging. It's equally hard for the parents, perhaps more so. These are the sacrifices a player has to make, but they aren't alone in making them.
"I'll always support my kids and their dreams, and they may have potential, but they're going to work for it," Vallera-Koloesho said. "I tell my kids, 'I don't care what you do as long as you do it at 100 percent' because my job as a parent is to support and guide and help. Luca, from a young age, was so determined to do it. I missed him like crazy but, as a mom, it's my job to support and help them with their path. If they make it, great. If they don't, at least they gave it 100 percent."
Koleosho joined the academy at Spanish side Reus in 2016, spending four years with the lower-division club before making the big move to Espanyol. He impressed the Barcelona-based club enough for them to reward him with a contract in June 2021. Two years later, in one of his five La Liga appearances, he scored his first senior goal against Almeria.
In July of 2023, he was off to Burnley in England, the subject of a $3.5 million transfer. That August, he made his Premier League debut, starting a 3-0 loss to the almighty Manchester City.
"I just remembered seeing the list," he recalls of that debut, "and then I saw my name. I was like, 'Damn, already? Alright then!' I was ready for the game. I don't think it really hit me until we were walking out of the tunnel, and then you could hear the music and all that stuff. I got to enjoy the moment, but I was mainly thinking of winning, so when we lost, I was pissed off.
"I think even in my interview that they had me do after the game on NBC, you could tell I was still pissed off because I was just so tuned into the game."
He made 15 appearances in that first season, scoring his first Premier League goal in a 5-0 demolition of Sheffield United in December 2023. The Clarets, though, were relegated, and the belief was that a year in the Championship would be a launchpad for Koleosho to run riot.
It didn't work that way. The winger struggled with form and injuries last season, scoring just twice in 28 appearances. In the end, though, Burnley were promoted. Another crack at the Premier League awaits.
"You have to just take it like a man and go on with it," Koleosho said. "You have to just get used to it. The whole goal is to get back up as quickly as you can and not get stuck there because the longer you stay there, the easier it is to get stuck. Then it's going to be a cycle and you need to get back to where you need to be. You can't take anything for granted, because things can change really fast."
There's no guarantee where Koloesho's next opportunity will be. Transfer rumors, of course, are swirling, as they always have. At one point, he was linked with Bayern. This summer, there are links with a move elsewhere in Europe. Discussions regarding his international future continue, too, and those will remain.
Getty Images SportItalian dreams
Koleosho's Italian is pretty damn good, he says. No accent. When he's with Italy, he speaks and sounds just like everyone else.
"A lot of people say, 'Oh, he can't speak Italian'. That's cap," he says. "I had a base already and, the more time I spent there, it improved even more."
The winger just spent the better part of this summer using those skills. Koleosho spent his June in Slovakia, representing the Azzurri at the U21 Euros. He started two of Italy's matches, including a heartbreaking 3-2 loss to Germany in the quarterfinals. It was Koleosho, of course, who opened the scoring, going on an extended run with the ball before cutting in and picking out the bottom corner with a finish from just outside of the box.
This summer wasn't Koleosho's first run with Italy. He's been representing the Azzurri for more than two years, having been capped at the U19, U20 and U21 levels. Prior to that, he'd had experiences with both the U.S. and Canada. It's easy to see why both would want him.
The USMNT is crying out for wing depth, something that Koloesho could provide both in the present and the future. Former USMNT boss Gregg Berhalter said he was regularly in contact with the young winger during his time in charge. The federation has made no secret that they'd love to welcome him if that was, ultimately, what Koloesho wanted to do. Burnley part-owner and NFL legend JJ Watt has even thrown his thoughts into the mix, pitching Koleosho on a future with the USMNT.
Italy, too, clearly want to keep him. In addition to his U21 Euro run, Koleosho was reportedly in consideration for a senior call-up in March. With Mattia Zaccagni dealing with an injury, Koloesho was viewed as an injury replacement. It didn't happen, but it shows that the senior team isn't particularly far away.
The topic, of course, is a sensitive one. In few other lines of work are people forced to make such choices of identity, but it's this exactly decision which will define Koleosho – one way or another. He's not eager to discuss it, largely because it is so damn hard. He's not closing the door on anything at this point.
"On one hand, I want to do it for myself. On the other hand, I also want to do it for my parents," Koleosho says. "Since I was young, my mom has always said that she wants to see me in that Azzurri shirt, playing for the country, signing the anthem. The fact that I've been blessed with that opportunity to play for them already, I know she's happy. She's proud of me. If I were able to make the first team, and for her to see me, to come to that game, she'd be so happy.
"She gets so smiley. There's so much history behind it. It's much bigger than me. It's her, her family, everyone. They're all seeing me in that jersey. Being able to make them happy, being able to do something for them, as well as me, too, it means a lot to me."
It's a powerful thing, the desire to please your parents. Giuseppe Rossi, another famous Italian-American who ultimately spurred the USMNT for the Azzurri, recently told GOAL all about it. After making his decision, Rossi knew he had made the right one when he saw the look on his father's face. Koloesho knows that look. He's seen it with his mother.
Vallera-Koloesho stresses, though, that that look isn't conditional. It doesn't depend on what country he represents or what club he plays for. It doesn't require him to feel one way or another. Whatever her son chooses, U.S., Italy or otherwise, Vallera-Koloesho says she'll be right behind him.
"He's going to figure it out," she says. "He's coming into being a man. I think all of the morals, the ethics, the guidance that you taught them as a kid, Luca is going to use that to come into his own as a man. All we can do is support him and whatever decision he makes and whatever he identifies as. I'll never push my kids one way or another because they are their own person. I'm just going to support him, no matter what decision he ends up making."
And that pride is non-negotiable.
"I just want my son to be happy," she says. "He's doing something he loves and he's sacrificed so much to be given this special opportunity. I'm so proud of him, so proud of the man he's become. Luca gives me so much pride. It does put tears in my eyes because I'm just so proud of everything he's already accomplished."
There's so more to accomplish, though. This is all just getting started.
Getty Images SportMeet Luca
If there's one thing Koleosho has learned thus far, it's that none of this is permanent. Things can change quickly – doubly so once you reach higher levels of this sport.
"I know that if I want to really make it, this is going to be more difficult," he says. "You have to perform at a higher intensity. You have to do more and be more confident because you learn that anyone can be replaced. You're not as important as you think you are. You can be replaced at any moment, so you have to take advantage of that opportunity when it's given."
More opportunities are on the way. Will they come with Burnley or elsewhere? Will the next call-up be from Italy or the USMNT? What comes next? Koleosho admits he doesn't know.
"The big lesson has been to keep working," he says. "It doesn't matter how you're feeling. You always have to keep your body well-tuned to go out and play the next game. I missed so much this past season and it's about not taking anything for granted because stuff switches really, really fast. Yeah, that's how it is in sports. I don't really let it affect me. I just do me and focus on me."
The outside world is focusing on him, too. He knows it and feels it, even if he is hesitant to talk about it. Everything is constantly changing. Preseason has already started. A new season is getting underway and, with it, a new opportunity to grow, develop and, yes, change.
Who will Koleosho be the next time he comes home? Even he can't be sure. The Duchess order will always stay the same, but Koloesho can't. Life in this sport doesn't really work that way.
