In Italy, they’re passionate about family, faith and football. Joe Tacopina inherited that same love from his Italian immigrant parents.
So while his dad was undeniably proud that he become a high-profile Manhattan attorney, it was when Tacopina became vice president of the Italian soccer team Roma that he, for the first time, saw his stoic late father tear up.
Following Roma, Tacopina bought Bologna, turning around the club’s finances and getting it promoted to the top of Italian football, Serie A.
Now comes his most audacious project, buying Venezia out of bankruptcy last year and trying to lift Venice’s struggling fourth-division club from the hinterlands of soccer’s minor leagues to rival the likes of AC Milan and Juventus.
Oh, and making a killing.
“There’s such passion with this game. It’s not sport. In Italy, it’s the fiber of the community. It transcends into the community in a way that sport doesn’t here. It’s family, religion and football — and not in that order,’’ Tacopina told The Post. “The passion they have for it, you can parlay it into a revenue stream and make the business healthy.”
Italian soccer hasn’t been healthy in years. Serie A was once the best league in the world until facilities neglect and financial mismanagement have left it ailing. But where others saw illness, Tacopina saw “the best opportunity in sports.”
And he’s pursued it with the same canniness he practices law.
“Tacopina, I went to look for him myself,’’ Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro told Il Gazzattino, “because he is one that in soccer does business.”
‘It’s family, religion and football — and not in that order’
With a boosted budget, plans for a new stadium, and an overqualified staff that includes former Roma sporting director Giorgio Perinetti and ex-Milan manager Filippo Inzaghi, Tacopina saw his team win promotion from Serie D last year up to Lega Pro (formerly Serie C).
In a three-way tie atop Group B — one of LegaPro’s three 20-team divisions — after this weekend’s 3-1 win over Teramo, they’re on pace to get promoted again to Serie B. Tacopina is convinced reaching Serie A isn’t fantasy, but fait accompli.
“It’s not if. It’s when,’’ said Tacopina. “We have the highest payroll in Lega Pro. I didn’t build this team to be in Lega Pro for two years.”
The 50-year-old Tacopina — who has represented ballers and rappers, cops and accused killers — is built for challenges.
Born to Italian immigrants in Brownsville — he lived on Amboy Street, like Mike Tyson — he became“the best-dressed, smoothest-talking, hardest-working criminal defense attorney going,’’ according to GQ. He’s got the yacht, the Maserati and the $6,500 Panerai watch.
Tacopina has worked with Jay Z and Maroon 5, defended Yankee star Alex Rodriguez, rapper Foxy Brown, mob princess Victoria Gotti and former police chief Bernard Kerik, and even sprung “A Bronx Tale” star Lillo Brancato and accused killer Joran van der Sloot.
“I don’t give up,’’ Tacopina said.
It’s a trait he’ll need. Italy’s soccer has more drama than it’s opera.
Teams are almost always renting in aging stadiums they don’t own, and are run by the local town’s wealthiest men who ignore the commercial side and use them as playthings. It’s taken its toll.
“They’re tremendous businessmen in what they do. But when they own soccer teams, it’s like they lose their brain,’’ Tacopina said. “They say football is just for social currency.”
But Tacopina saw the potential for real, tangible currency, so five years ago he seized on it. He was part of limited Red Sox partner Thomas DiBenedetto’s group that bought Roma as the first foreign ownership in Serie A history — and became VP of his father Cosmo’s boyhood team.
“That was the first time I saw my dad cry,’’ Tacopina said.
Later, he brought Joey Saputo into his purchase of Bologna, and strongly advised Mets Hall of Famer Mike Piazza to buy LegaPro side Reggiana.
“He’s been very supportive,’’ Piazza told The Post.
Their teams are in the same LegaPro division, Venezia joint top at 18 points and Piazza’s Reggiana just three points back. Only four of the 60 will get promoted.
“We want to first stabilize the club financial, run the club like a business,’’ Piazza said. “For years, the clubs were social currency. Wealthy guys from the towns fund clubs, the clubs would run a loss, be unable to meet payroll and go bankrupt. They were run loosely. We just want to introduce sound business.”
Tacopina has shown a talent for just that.
After boosting Roma’s profits — it was bought at 130 million euros, and is now valued at over 500 million — he quadrupled Roma’s valuation in one year as owner. But when a chance conversation last year with Italian federation secretary Mauro Vladovich turned his attention to Venice, he sold his Bologna shares and pounced.
“Soccer and tourism: That’s my model. Look at Chelsea. Proudly 28%-35% of their games are occupied by tourists, and they market to that,’’ said Tacopina, pointing to the Premier League as a perfect model, profits coming from an equally-sliced pie of gameday, TV and commercial income.
“The opportunity for me at Venezia was one I couldn’t pass up. You have the most beautiful city in the world, and there’s 35 million tourists.”
It’s closer to 20 million, but it’s still the most in Italy, with cruise ship tourism in the city vaulting five-fold in just 15 years. In short, if Italian soccer is a gold mine, Venezia was a diamond mine sitting untapped.
Rather than buy the club from its Russian owner — which would’ve required paying off $6 million in debt and starting in Lega Pro with a six-point deduction — Tacopina simply waited for it to go into bankruptcy for the third time. He bought the club’s rights for just $6.7 million in league fees and operating costs, and with partners is pouring in another $19 million to build it up.
“Joe rebranded in a really great way,’’ CEO Ted Philipakos told the Post via phone from Venice. “You’re comparing something to nothing. Joe effectively resurrected this club from the dead.”
Tacopina got hotels to sell tickets for a cut. He visited San Marco square vendors to create a membership card for discounts on food, hotels, merchandise, and of course Venezia tickets. He created a merchandising department selling 1,000 jerseys in six weeks after not selling any the prior year.
Venezia saw attendance reach 5,000 — modest, yes, but their best in 16 years. And with every single outfield starter having Serie A or B experience they steamrolled through the fourth division to make Tacopina the only president of two Italian clubs to win titles in one calendar year, or get promoted in consecutive seasons.
Next up: Building a new stadium. Only three Serie A teams even own their stadiums; but Venezia has been stuck renting in Italy’s second-oldest. Built in 1913, Stadio Pierluigi Penzo is charming with players arriving by boat, and picturesque with a view of the water and Dolomites. But it’s outdated and undersized (7,500 without added seats).
‘The opportunity for me at Venezia was one I couldn’t pass up.’
“I told (Brugnaro) you have to promise me you’re going to support me on the stadium project, because if there’s no stadium project, there’s no project. I wouldn’t have come,’’ Tacopina said of a 22,000-25,000 seat stadium on the mainland near Marco Polo airport. “He’s a wealthy businessman who became mayor, a little Bloomberg-ish.
“He didn’t come up through the political circles, so the bureaucratic stuff, he gets things done. I’m speaking his language. He gets it, that we’ll create 10,000 new jobs for the city. He understands the tax dollars that’ll be contributed to the coffers of the city will be enormous. This is a boom-plus.”
But that’s the future: The present in vying for promotion, including against Reggiana. They tied 1-1 tie last month in Venice and play again Jan. 22.
“If you can use England as the template, the Italian product is great. There’s a lot of passion, a lot of drama; classically Italian,’’ Piazza laughed. “It’s a good bet. Soccer in Italy is a passion. You don’t have American football, basketball, hockey. In Italy, it’s just soccer. The fans are very passionate; they’re like Mets fans.”
