"Two bacon, egg, and cheeses, curly fries and a mango smoothie."
That's the order, the one that signifies that Luca Koleosho is back home.
Those visits, admittedly, come less often these days, but that makes them more meaningful. They so often begin with a quick stop at Duchess, a culinary staple that anyone from Connecticut will be eager to tell you all about. Koleosho is no different than anyone else in the Nutmeg State. That trip to Duchess is his slice of home. Those breakfast sandwiches serve as unofficial confirmation that the season is over, and that Koloesho now has the freedom to be himself for a little while.
"Home is still America, but I'm really only allowed to go back maybe once a year, usually when the season ends," he tells GOAL. "When I do get that chance, I go back and get comfortable. I get to do the things I did before. I get to eat what I always ate. I get to go to the places that I've always wanted to go to. When I'm home, I'm going to Duchess."
Back home in Connecticut, Koleosho isn't the young Burnley winger battling for a chance to prove himself in Europe. He's also not the young man straddling multiple identities, the Italian international from America at the center of a dual-national panic among fans of the U.S. men's national team.
Back home, with that BEC in hand, he's Luca, the guy who has had the same Duchess order for as long as he can remember. He gets to be that same kid who loved soccer almost as much as he hated losing. He gets to be an older brother and a son who admits that he is so, so desperate to make his family proud.
At his core, Koleosho is just the same old American kid, but maybe something a bit more, too. Life can be more complicated than that, especially for a professional soccer player who is so often forced to choose. So much of the discussion of Koleosho centers around where he wants to go next and, perhaps more importantly, why he wants to go there.
The son of an Italian-Canadian and a Nigerian-American, it's been a discussion for years. He currently plays for Italy and has established himself as a crucial part of their youth national team setup. The more he continues and the more he succeeds with that Azzurri shirt, the more it looks like his dreams could take him further and further away from America.
Those are things he'll have to address someday. Just 20 years old, Koloesho is focused so much on the short-term. He's focused on a club breakout and, maybe, a senior call-up to Italy. When and if that comes, then he'll have to choose. For now, though, Luca can just be Luca, a person who totally understands himself, but is still figuring out his place in everything around him.
"I don't see it as something that I have to choose one or the other," he says. "I don't have to feel a certain way to balance this all out. I'm just me. I know people get confused by that. 'How can he be four nationalities? How is he this? How is he that?' At the end of the day, though, that's just me.
"I just want people to get to know me, to get to know my personality. I feel like them seeing me more will get them more open to my personality. Sometimes I'm chill, sometimes I have energy. I'm probably goofing off, playing basketball, cracking jokes over pro clubs. I'm normal."
Koloesho's journey is anything but normal, though, and the choices that will ultimately define it won't be normal, either.
GOAL sat down with the Burnley winger to discuss his career so far, how he got here and the difficult decisions ahead.