Here’s the Pitch: Babson Kicks Around Collaboration with Top Italian Soccer Club

It’s 12:30 p.m. on a Saturday in the most northeastern part of Italy, and Mike Lynch and two Babson College soccer coaches are preparing to watch a Serie A match between Udinese Calcio and Bologna—a key game in Italy’s top-flight soccer league. 

But, first, the trio must navigate a 2½-hour, four-course lunch prepared by a two-star Michelin chef inside the President Club: pasta with a cheese sauce, a shrimp dish, lasagna, followed by a tiramisu, accompanied by lots of espresso. 

“It was one of the most magnificent meals I’ve ever had,” said Lynch, the Pamela P. and Brian M. Barefoot Associate Vice President for Athletics and Athletics Advancement at Babson. “It was just an amazing opportunity.” 

Lynch and two of Babson’s assistant soccer coaches—Tim Mason of the women’s team and EJ Reutemann of the men’s team—were guests of Magda Pozzo P’26, a senior executive with the Udinese Calcio club, which is owned by her father, Giampaolo Pozzo G’26. 

Pozzo brought the Babson contingent to Udine, Italy—about 80 minutes northeast of Venice, nearly on the border of Austria and Slovenia—to kick around a collaboration between Babson and the soccer club, a one-of-a-kind possibility for any college athletics program. 

Lynch recently sat down with Babson Thought & Action to discuss how the collaboration could open a world of possibilities for Babson’s men’s and women’s soccer programs, Babson Athletics, and the College. 

How did the discussions about this collaboration begin? 

“I was introduced to Magda about two years ago, and we started talking about their organization, Udinese Calcio, which her family owns. They’re very entrepreneurial as a team because they don’t have the overwhelming resources that you’d have at the biggest clubs like Inter Milan or AC Milan. They’re kind of a mid-tier team that’s trying to play above their resources, so they have to be entrepreneurial. Their league, Serie A, now has opened an office in New York City, and Magda is hoping that at some point she could bring her team to the United States. One of the things she likes about Babson is our facilities, and she started wondering if her team could train here. I suggested the potential for a kind of exchange where our student-athletes could go to Italy and do a European tour. The last time Magda came to Babson, she brought me this cool jersey made of recycled plastic, so I was going to send her a Babson jersey, but she said, ‘Better than that, why don’t you come to Italy? I think it’d be important for you to see our program, to experience what it’s like to be a part of our team, to see our facilities, and we can continue to discuss if this would work.’ ” 

What did you learn about the club on the trip? 

“Magda wanted us to witness a game, so we saw Udinese play Bologna in a Serie A match (Udinese lost, 3-0). She introduced us to everybody on their team—their sports psychologist, nutritionist, strength and conditioning coach. We met the GM, the president, and the owner. She wanted to give us a feel of how their organization ran. It’s one of the few top-flight clubs in Italy that are still family owned and operated, and it really felt like that. Everybody was aligned around the mission of the team, and we developed a great sense of how entrepreneurial they are as an organization, how they utilize every little thing they have, and how they use it to their best advantage. They rebuilt the second half of the stadium, and it’s now one of the most energy-efficient stadiums anywhere in the world. They explained their nutrition program for each of their athletes. It’s right down to very minute details. To pick up all that information is helpful for us as we continue to build our programs. They rolled out the red carpet and opened their entire operation to us.” 

What else did you do on the trip? 

“Magda asked me to do a presentation on Babson to several people from their community—the mayor of Udine, business leaders and representatives from the chambers of commerce in the Friuli-Venezia Region and the University of Udine, as well as executives from the club. They were all very interested in this idea of working with an American institution, and specifically Babson, because of our expertise in entrepreneurship.” 

What possibilities could this collaboration yield?

“The core of it is this exchange, but it could be a unique, interesting collaboration between one of the best educational institutions in the world together with this high-level Serie A top-line soccer family. One of the things they’d like to do is plant a flag in the U.S. and use Babson as a U.S. location. That’s big picture, but the first step toward introducing the U.S. to Udinese Calcio is through a camp or clinic, potentially for this summer, for youth players. We’re still brainstorming. The most recent idea is an educational collaboration. If our players went over there, is there a possibility of doing something at the University of Udine, whether it’s a class or a day? Certainly, Magda was thinking, for her athletes and her fans, is there a chance for Babson to put together an educational component here, similar to what we do with Professional and Executive Education programs.” 

What would this collaboration mean for Babson Athletics? 

“It’s one of those differentiators. It’s something that nobody else is doing. That, to me, is the essence of why this is such a great opportunity. It’s a dream plan, but if we can pull off even a piece of this, it shows the power of Babson. We wouldn’t have the opportunity to do this with anybody else. The whole thing is different. For me, the primary payoff is for our student-athletes to experience something like this, to take the trip of a lifetime, that could spark some part of their imagination they don’t even know exists that might help them to do something in their lives.”