A state-of-the-art sports center, nestled on the Tiber River, is being reborn in Riano, between the Flaminia and the Tiberina, thanks to the conspicuous investments of Tonino Doino, the U.S. entrepreneur born in the capital and returned to his roots from Miami to fulfill a dream. To become the president of an Italian soccer team, the country he left to seek his fortune more than four decades ago.

And so, having acquired the sports title of Fiuggi, the wealthy restaurateur founded the Roma City Football Club, which has the Colosseum in its coat of arms, with which it will participate in Serie D playing on the outskirts of the capital. More exactly at the Riano Athletic Center, the headquarters of the club that will have as its driving force a state-of-the-art soccer school destined to become a laboratory.

Tonino wants to do things right and without haste. With humility, a method that has already borne copious fruit in his life. Tonino had boarded a cruise ship in his twenties and traveled between Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, before touring the length and breadth of the United States: Texas, Louisiana, Orlando, Connecticut, and Florida. Here he eventually put down roots and made his fortune.

From waiter to gourmet chef with his trendy restaurants featuring typical, strictly, Italian cuisine. Like "Rosinella," named after the legendary mom who arrived with her dad Vito Antonio in Rome from Lucania, one of the most famous in Florida. Or like "Sunset Juice Cafe" and "Due Baci," or like "Sport Cafe," the first ever opened in the mid-1990s in South Beach and frequented at the time by, among others, fashion designer Gianni Versace. But among Miami's Italian entrepreneurs there is not one who has not crossed paths with Tonino's humanity and friendliness, even before his cuisine in one of the food and wine establishments, a dozen or so, inaugurated in a season of laborious activity and achievements not only economic.

Doino has a Roman accent and an American business culture, with which he will try to tiptoe into Italian soccer always to be taken with due precautions to avoid surprises. "Mine is an attempt to build something from the bottom and with the right approach. I speak Italian, but my mentality as an entrepreneur was formed in the States," explains the president of Roma City FC. "I am studying to understand the logics of a world that I know little about from the inside even though I have been following soccer as a Giallorossi fan for as long as I can remember.