ONE OF THE MANY benefits to being a professional soccer player is the opportunity to see the world. With games, leagues, and tournaments all over the globe, players have the chance to regularly travel to different countries and continents to see different cultures and languages. For SM Caen attacker Nicholas Gioacchini, however, soccer is providing the rare opportunity to return home.

A native of Kansas City, Gioacchini left when he was eight years old to move to Italy with his family for his father’s pasta machinery business. When he returned to the states, he lived in Bethesda, Maryland before returning to France – where he would eventually begin his professional career in his later teenage years.