The Scots thriving in Italy: ‘Everyone was surprised I actually had good technique’

January will mark seven years since Empoli midfielder Liam Henderson emigrated to Italy.

He can scarcely believe that the 21-year-old boy who arrived in Bari is now a 28-year-old with five Serie A and Serie B clubs under his belt, never mind that he is the missionary who rekindled the idea of Scots playing, and succeeding, in Italian football.

“I hope it is seen that way,” Henderson tells The Athletic. “I like to think that anyone who saw me thought I had the right attitude and maybe they should dip into the Scottish market more. That’s the fairytale and if I have rubbed off on the Italians then it means a lot.

“It was never the intention to stay this long but I have loved it and the Italian clubs seem to like me as well. I’ve spent my adult career in Italy, so Italy is my market now rather than, say, the English Championship.”

As a Celtic academy product who made 37 first-team appearances, winning the Scottish Cup while on loan at Hibernian, the move to Bari in January 2018 for regular football was a seismic change.

“The one thing I remember from my first week was how surprised everyone was that I actually had good technique,” says Henderson.

“Even the sporting director Sean Sogliano, who had first seen me at 16 playing for Celtic against Milan in the UEFA Youth League, didn’t realise my game was so technical.

“They were expecting this Scottish boy to come and smash folk, but that was never me as I had always played No 10.”

Bari can be excused for buying into stereotypes. It had been 32 years since the last Scottish player had graced Italy — and that man was Graeme Souness.

The former Liverpool captain and three-time European Cup winner spent two years at Sampdoria between 1984 and 1986. He was in a team that boasted England’s Trevor Francis and the Republic of Ireland’s Liam Brady, along with Italy’s Roberto Mancini and Gianluca Vialli.

Souness excelled, helping the club finish fourth in Serie A — their joint-best at the time — while also winning their first Coppa Italia, scoring in both legs of the final against Milan.

He had continued the lineage of Scots in Italy after Denis Law’s British-record transfer to Torino in 1961 and Joe Jordan’s time at Milan and Verona in the 1980s. They endured mixed fortunes but after Rangers whisked Souness back to Scotland as player-manager after just two years, no Scottish player set foot in Italy again for over three decades.

Henderson ended the drought in 2018 when he left Celtic for Serie B side Bari and a wave of Scottish talent has followed, with another seven players tracing his steps.

Six months later, Scotland Under-21 international Harvey St Clair left Chelsea to join Serie B side Venezia. Aaron Hickey then joined Bologna from Hearts, aged 18, in 2020. He impressed so much at left-back that he was nominated for the Golden Boy award for best under-21 player in Europe and earned himself a £17million ($21m) move to Brentford within two years.

In the summer of 2022, Josh Doig moved from Hibernian to Hellas Verona and Lewis Ferguson swapped Aberdeen for Bologna. The latter was awarded the captaincy after one year and last season claimed the Bulgarelli No 8 award for the best midfielder in Serie A.

This summer, there were three more additions. Antonio Conte remade Napoli’s midfield by signing Billy Gilmour and Scott McTominay from Brighton & Hove Albion and Manchester United, while Che Adams left Premier League newbies Southampton for Torino and scored four goals in his first eight games.

So, after such a lengthy hiatus, why have Scots become hot property in Italy?

One Serie A sporting director explains how they had never sent on-the-ground scouts to Scotland until a few years ago when Hickey’s impact made others take notice of the value on offer. Now as soon as a player registers high up on their database, they send scouts over to take a closer look.

The value Italian clubs are finding in young, proven first-team talents makes Scotland attractive compared to England, where most players become quickly out of their reach. Henderson cost just over £100,000, Hickey was around £1.5m, and Doig and Ferguson were £3m each.

Italian clubs say Scottish players integrating and assimilating into the culture has ticked another box. Their work rate, attitude and professionalism mean they view them as low risk, adding good character and focus to the dressing room.

As much as Scottish football’s regression dampened the attractiveness of its players to top European leagues, their absence on the continent was also down to how insular players tended to be. There had been Maurice Johnston at Nantes, Alan McInally at Bayern Munich, Murdo MacLeod and Paul Lambert at Borussia Dortmund but, aside from Ryan Gauld spending seven years in Portugal after moving from Dundee United to Sporting CP in 2014, very few have ventured further than England in recent decades.

Italy is the most concentrated pool of talent but there are plenty of Scots elsewhere too. Scott McKenna, Oli McBurnie and Jack Harper play in Spain, Oliver Burke, Scott Banks and Fraser Hornby are in Germany, Ewan Henderson, David Bates, Dire Mebude and Robbie Ure play in Belgium, Jack Hendry is in Saudi Arabia, Max Johnston is in Austria and Ryan Jack is in Turkey.

---

Taking the plunge is the toughest part.

Five years ago, Hickey was a 16-year-old in a whirlwind. Within a fortnight of making his debut for Hearts, he started in the Scottish Cup final against Celtic and six months later scored a 25-yard winner in the Edinburgh derby.

By the following summer, teams were queuing up to sign him. Celtic offered a squad role, Aston Villa a pathway from academy to the first team, while Bayern Munich gave him a tour of their facilities but could not promise a regular place in the first-team squad.

Bologna were different. They had watched him extensively on video and admired his two-footedness, a major asset he credits to his awkwardly-positioned childhood garden that prevented him shooting with his more powerful left foot due to a wall and forced him to hit thousands of his shots with his right instead.

The Italian side said they believed he would start the majority of their games, a guarantee they firmed up to get the deal over the line.

Hickey had not been interested in moving abroad to begin with as he still lived with his parents in Glasgow, but the welcome he received in Bologna was warm and he knew it was the best exposure for his career.

In 2018, the port city of Bari, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, felt a similarly long way from home for 21-year-old Henderson.

Born in Livingston, a town in the central belt of Scotland, family holidays had consisted of camping trips to Spain, France and Italy. He and his two younger brothers, one of whom (Ewan) plays for Belgian side Beerschot, would find local futsal pitches and play against boys of all nationalities. This, and an obsession with La Liga over the Premier League, were the first seeds that their football futures may lay abroad.

Henderson got a taste of it during a loan spell at Rosenborg in 2015 but when Bari came calling three years later, it was a much bigger decision. For his father, Nicky, who played over 250 games for eight clubs across the Scottish pyramid, there was little to consider.

“My dad grew up with Italia ’90 and (Diego) Maradona so he was desperate for me to come,” laughs Henderson.

“When we were swithering between what was the best option he thought I should go for it. As it was such a big step and no Scot had been there in 30 years, both clubs agreed for me to go over for a week to get a feel for the place and train to see if I liked it.

“It wasn’t a trial but if I had gone over and been guff I’m sure Bari would just have said, ‘Well, we’re not signing him now’.”

Henderson hit the ground running in his six months at Bari but the club went bankrupt — news confirmed after a 12-hour train to a mountainous training camp, from which they had to make their own way home.

Many would have taken this as the opportunity to go home but Henderson resisted the easy option. His ambition was to play in Serie A and so he moved to Hellas Verona with his Bari manager Fabio Grosso and played a key role in winning promotion, becoming the first Scottish player in 33 years to feature in the top division in Italy.

For Hickey, the outlook was different. He moved during the height of lockdown, complicating the transition. His dad lived with him for the first year but, after allaying Hickey’s fears about homesickness by highlighting the regular windows he would have to visit home, they ended up being unable to travel back to Scotland for seven months — a prediction they still joke about.

Once society opened back up, they would do driving tours of little towns outside Bologna or go to cities like Florence, Rome and Milan, but Hickey always viewed the move as more of a footballing version of Erasmus — the EU programme that offers students the chance to live and study abroad.

He would learn his trade in a different environment and come back to the UK a more rounded person and player. That is what Bologna found. No hassle, just a boy constantly learning as if he was at university.

Doig saw the success of Hickey as proof that Italy was a good step for a young Scottish full-back to make. He could have gone to Burnley or even Marseille, but the lifestyle helped to overcome any nerves about moving away and his form won him a move to Sassuolo.

Sassuolo were unexpectedly relegated but are two points off the top in Serie B. While some may have expected Doig to move on, he is loving life. He speaks the language fluently, regularly plays golf at Lake Garda and has made good friends with a group of Colombians.

Hickey would sit at the back of the room next to one of the fitness staff, who doubled as a translator, but he could tell he was missing large chunks of information. He learned all the football commands as he struggled with the lessons but he was unable to form deeper conversations with team-mates.

At Bologna, Ferguson already speaks the language fluently. It was something he had felt was imperative if he was to assert his presence. Bologna have 16 different nationalities in their squad and only nine Italians, so the club promotes an English-speaking policy but Ferguson wanted to immerse himself fully.

Learning the language is the biggest thing Henderson recommends to any other Scottish or British players thinking of moving to Italy or another foreign country.

“You can get by with just English but you’ll never truly feel part of the team,” he says.

“In the first year or two, me and my team-mates didn’t really get to know each other personally. At times, I wanted to say something regarding the game but I couldn’t, so it could feel a bit lonely.

“I never did lessons. I constantly sat next to Italians in the dressing room, listening in and being a pain by asking questions of the foreigners who could translate. I was hearing the same phrases and words every day so I picked them up.”

During his second spell with Empoli, in 2021, he was part of a majority-Italian dressing room, which meant English was in scarce supply. It concentrated his mind to become fluent.

“When I was writing out messages I would translate it so I could see the Italian version,” he says. “Now I can stand up in the dressing room and speak and the coach uses me as a translator. If you told me that seven years ago I would have said, ‘You’re mental’.

“If we are lucky enough to have children the first thing I am doing is making sure they learn another language as it can open up so many different roads. I wish I had stuck at French at school but I did a Zoom call with the kids at my old school to tell them how beneficial it is.

“I still make mistakes and mispronounce words with my Scottish accent so they laugh and take the piss but I don’t get embarrassed anymore. I just laugh and tell them, ‘F*** off, I’m not bothered’ — in Italian, of course.”

If there was any doubt as to how Ferguson is viewed after two and a half years in Italy, the Corriere di Bologna’s verdict this month made it clear.

After 203 days out injured with an anterior cruciate ligament injury, they christened him ‘Saint Lewis’ on his return. He had a hand in the winning goal against Lecce, which gave Bologna their first home win of the season, and the report said the Scot “had the keys to the cursed house”.

Ferguson surpassed all expectations with how quickly he adapted to life in Italy. It had always been an ambition of his to play abroad since he was a teenager and so after three years of putting the wheels in motion, he eventually received the offer he had been waiting on.

Watford was an option, as was Spain, but there were three concrete offers from Italian clubs. Hickey’s success at Bologna made them the most natural home.

It was the arrival of Thiago Motta as manager in September 2022, however, that led to him becoming a leading figure on the pitch.

Given freedom by Motta to make late runs from midfield, Ferguson’s game evolved and Motta saw fit to make the then-24-year-old his captain after rotating the armband for a couple of months.

He has three goals and six assists to his name and helped Bologna qualify for European football for the first time since 1999, an achievement that led Juventus to poach the Bologna manager. Motta, who won the Champions League with Inter in 2010, had total trust in Ferguson and knew that if he asked for an instruction to be carried out, it would be done to the letter.

Had Ferguson not suffered his injury shortly before Euro 2024, he could have been a Juventus player, such was their eagerness to bring him to the club along with his old boss. Napoli was the other interested suitor, which would have opened the possibility of an all-Scottish midfield alongside Gilmour and McTominay.

Nevertheless, Ferguson is back playing ahead of schedule, which has only been made possible by how single-mindedly he has approached his rehab. Ferguson, who lives in Italy with his wife Lauren and is expecting their second child in the new year, is said to be so content with life in Italy that he would easily stay at least another five years.

---

In May, Glasgow restaurant Bella Vita created a pizza in homage to former New York mafia boss Michael Franzese, who was visiting the city. Less than six months later they produced another special, this time called the ‘GilMcTominay’.

The recipe included Neapolitan meatball haggis nuggets and whisky sauce, a fusion arrived at after Gilmour and McTominay joined Napoli.

Napoli paid £25m for McTominay, who arrived at Naples airport to a hero’s reception. He has only gone up in their estimation since, registering two goals — including the equaliser against champions Inter — and two assists to take Napoli to the top of the table.

After Scotland uncovered his best position as an attacking midfielder in 2021, he can showcase his athleticism and box-crashing ability alongside a familiar face in Gilmour.

Despite being one of the best performers of the Roberto De Zerbi era at Brighton, there were question marks over how Gilmour would perform in a more direct style. When Fabian Hurzeler arrived from St Pauli in June, the plan did not include Gilmour and he was made available for transfer.

Gilmour is now working with former Chelsea boss Conte, who left Stamford Bridge a year before he made his first-team debut under Frank Lampard. It means he is consecutively learning from two Italian coaches with two of the most distinct styles in the game.

De Zerbi’s build-up style contrasts with Conte’s rehearsed patterns of play but Gilmour has adapted quickly. He started the past five league games before being left out of Sunday’s 1-0 win over Roma that took Napoli back to the top of Serie A.

There are differences in the footballing cultures. At Bologna, Hickey found training would be paused a lot more as there was such a focus on the tactical aspect of the game. In Scotland, he had grown up on a diet of possession drills and mini games, with maybe some work on shape at the end.

There is also the dated perception of Italian football as defensive and pedestrian-paced.

“I thought that too but I run a lot more here than back home,” says Henderson.

“Virtually every team is going man-to-man across the full pitch in Italy so you’ve got a man on you more or less the whole time. I was told about slow pace, loads of time on the ball, but I’ve never had that feeling.

“The one difference is that you’re never going to get smashed. In Scotland, when you fake shoot a lot of the defenders go to ground or slide to block it. I would do a Cruyff turn and they’d fall for it. I was trying it here and no one was going to ground.

“I said to one of the boys, ‘What is going on here? None of you slide like it’s last ditch’. He told me that from the age of three or four, the fundamental rule is always stay on your feet, never go to ground. I was like, ‘Jeezo, I need another trick!’.”

Henderson did produce a piece of magic for the media officer at Palermo last season. A Trainspotting aficionado with the tattoos to prove it, he learned that its creator Irvine Welsh, a Hibernian fan, was in Palermo. Henderson put them in contact and the media officer was able to make his dream come true by giving his hero a tour of the stadium.

There may be one more miracle needed from Henderson, however. His team mate Liberato Cacace, half-Italian but raised in New Zealand, is his neighbour and has become like a little brother to him. Henderson and his wife Rebecca regularly host Cacace and his partner for dinner, but a request has come in: they want to try haggis, neeps and tatties.

If anyone can find a way to import this Scottish staple it is Henderson, the man who helped bring seven Scottish footballers to Italy.

(Top photos: Getty Images/Design: Dan Goldfarb)