Being the only Italian player in the entire National Football League, Giorgio Tavecchio gets asked a lot about his very first approach to American Football. Born and raised until he was 9 years old in Italy, a country where the national sport is soccer, it comes as a surprise that the 29 years old native of Milan became a NFL placekicker instead.

Funny enough the push to give a try to America’s most iconic game came from his Italian family. “One day a friend of mine randomly asked me to come try out as a kicker on the High School football team my sophomore year and I initially said no,” Giorgio tells me,  “but my mother urged me to try it out to see if I liked it.