'Football is made for this type of emotion': An inside look at Lorenzo Callegari's recruitment and belief in the HFX Wanderers

His English — by his own admission — is improving daily and the barista quickly sets to complete the alchemy of steam and milk. We chat while we wait for our drinks and head to the second level of the café.

Settling in, our table offers a panoramic view of the Bedford Basin with the distant bridges framed like goalposts.

But there’s no mistaking the vista for Paris or Terni or any of the other stops the 25-year old Frenchman and former PSG academy player has taken along his footballing career. His journey to suiting up for the Halifax Wanderers has been winding, to say the least.

We speak mostly in French but sometimes delve into the patois found between languages and our conversation moves from the Wanderers to Messi to the CPL.

Finally, I ask him if it’s been hard adapting to a new club, a new country and a new culture.

“Honestly, I think it’s good to change and experience different cultures,” says Callegari, who is in his first season with the Wanderers following a move from FC Chambly. “Everyone (in Canada) has been welcoming and I was very well received by my teammates. Right away, I felt comfortable and that extends to the pitch. Everything’s come together so that I feel good and at ease. The club has a family-like feeling to it.”

If you’ve watched a millisecond of Callegari in a Wanderers shirt, you’ll know he looks more than comfortable on the pitch. He’s arguably become head coach Patrice Gheisar’s most important player through the first 18 matches of the season, a footballer who looks every bit as polished as his resume implies. He currently leads the CPL in passes, recoveries and forms the spine of Halifax’s midfield.

Talent is never something Callegari has lacked.

And as we talk, he speaks openly about growing up as a hopeful star in PSG’s system and the choices which have led him to this café in Canada.

“It wasn’t easy,” he says.

France, Italy and a chance overseas

Callegari started at PSG’s youth academy in 2011.

Over his time with the Ligue 1 giants, he amassed 43 appearances for their B team before signing his first professional contract. He realized his dream by making his first team debut in 2016 against Real Madrid but, with the likes of Marco Verratti, Thiago Motta and Blaise Matuidi penciled into midfield, failed to win over head coach Unai Emery. He logged only three minutes in Ligue 1 that year and by 2018, his time with PSG was over.

Looking back, Callegari says he was maybe a bit immature for the spotlight of the French capital and has grown as both a player and person since.

“The difference is when I arrived with the first team at PSG as a 17 or 18-year old, I was really young. It was my first season playing with men because I was playing with the academy players before,” he said.

He then signed a four year contract with the Italian club Genoa but was promptly put on loan to Ternana Calcio. Exposed to the mercurial world of Italian football, Callegari was soon swept out of Genoa in a regime change following the hiring (and firing) of three separate coaches and a sporting director.

Callegari returned to France with third-tier club US Avranches, using his strong season as a stepping stone to a two-year deal with Chambly in Ligue 2. However, the club was relegated in 2021.

“The more time passes, the more I think you need to recognize the good in each experience. There’s always something you can learn and grow from,” says Callegari in summary of his journey.

Despite his strong foundation, the former PSG midfielder found himself several rungs lower than he had started at. With his contract at Chambly coming to an end, Callegari began investigating his options.

Searching for a new project

Halifax Wanderers sporting director Matt Fegan says he knew he had a rebuild on his hands even before the end of the 2022 season.

He looked to Forge and their structure as an example to replicate, admiring the distribution and pedigree of Kyle Bekker in the middle of the pitch and put out feelers in his network to find a player who could fulfill a similar role for Halifax.

Eventually, someone pointed him towards Callegari as a potential target.

“Lorenzo’s actually somebody that we identified last year. I remember actually having discussions with the previous coaching staff around his fit and the type of player he was,” says Fegan over the phone. “He was coming out of contract last year from his French league team and we just stayed in touch. I was very adamant we could really only offer something for 2023 so it had to take a bit of time to come together.”

Recruitment isn’t easy at the best of times but the added complication of a potential coaching change proved difficult to navigate.

Still, Fegan and his staff continued to have conversations with Callegari and his agents about both the league and the Wanderers’ vision for the future. They first wanted to qualify that Callegari was not only the type of player but also the type of person they wanted to recruit.

“I like to think we do a good job of being meticulous around our discussions with players,” explains Fegan. “But I think almost as important is the right type of personality, the right type of motivation. We’ve seen a lot of players who have come from outside Canada and sometimes, there are some players who have had a unique journey. I think, what I’ve come to learn about this, especially when it’s a player who isn’t trying to take the first step in their career but maybe somebody looking to relaunch their career, these players just want to feel loved. They want to feel like you have a plan for them and that the little individual needs that they have are things you prioritize.”

Halifax ended up firing Stephen Hart in October, 2022.  Once Gheisar was hired in December, he was brought in to pitch his philosophy to Callegari and hopefully close the deal.

The Frenchman instantly took a liking to his now coach.

“(Patrice) told me about his plans, how he saw things, asked about my career. I really liked what he had to say and the way he sees football. So my French agent, my agent in Vancouver, Matt Fegan, Patrice and I were all on a call talking about the future. Well, I tried to talk but my English at the time needed some work,” says Callegari with a chuckle.

In the end, says Callegari, he was persuaded by the vision for Halifax’s future and the chance to try something new. He said yes and packed his bags for Canada.

“They showed me that they really wanted me. That’s something that was important to me: I wanted to go to a club where I could express myself as a player,” he says.

Fegan says it comes down to empathy, something that is all too often missing from the upper echelons of the beautiful game. In fact, the sporting director’s own upbringing has made him uniquely qualified to potentially understand what the athletes he recruits are going through.

“You have to have empathy,” says Fegan, who had lived in six different countries spanning the globe by the time he was 18. “I know what it takes to move and relocate between places and live in countries where they don’t speak your first language. It’s one of those things where you have to have empathy.”

Putting in the work

Callegari’s proven to be the linchpin Fegan and Gheisar thought he could be.

From their first match of the season, the Frenchman has impressed teammates and opponents alike with his technical ability, vision and playmaking. The result is that when he’s available, he plays. He often leads the Wanderers in touches and passes, breaking the opponent’s lines and chipping in offensively. He leads the Wanderers with four assists. His talent wouldn’t be amiss in the MLS or somewhere back in Europe.

But it’s one thing to have talent and it’s another to put in the work, something that has been top of mind for Callegari since he committed to the Wanderers all those months ago.

“I told myself it’s my turn to put in the work on the pitch. If I do my job, there’s no reason to stress,” he says, finishing his cappuccino.

When asked if he had extra motivation moving to North America, he again mentions how he’s matured as a person through hard lessons learned in Europe.

“You never know how things are going to go but it’s also up to you to embrace the adventure. If I didn’t work and sat in my corner and didn’t make an effort to learn English, there’s no doubt that I wouldn’t enjoy myself,” Callegari says.

Fegan notes you never know how a player is going to perform once they are brought into the squad but it’s his job to give them the best chance of success.

For example, when he decided to target Callegari, Fegan realized the midfielder could benefit from teammates with a bit of height. He subsequently recruited centre-backs Cale Loughrey (6’3) and Daniel Nimick (6’2), adding some muscle paired with ball playing ability on the backline.

Fast forward a few months and there’s no denying this year’s iteration of the Wanderers are much improved and Callegari is a big component of that success.

 And if there was one thing Fegan was confident in it was that Callegari would fit Gheisar’s system seamlessly. 

“(The system) requires a player to see passes that most of the rest of the teams or even fans can’t often quite see. I think you can pinpoint some goals this season (where it's on display)  like the goal where we got the penalty against Forge at home in the last minute. The pass that Lorenzo played to Riley (Ferrazzo) to get in behind to win the penalty is something I’d argue less than five per cent of players in North America, forget about the CPL, I’d say in North America or the MLS are going to see,” says Fegan.

Speaking to the podcast Coast to Coast FC earlier in the season, Gheisar was equally full of praise.

“I think him and I are virtually perfect for each other,” said Gheisar. “He wants to make a million passes before a goal and so do I. I think Lorenzo has found a new home and new excitement that he’s been longing for for many years. Sometimes what’s meant to be will be."

They call it passion

One particular photo, taken following Halifax’s late penalty winner against Forge, captures the highs which athletes crave with Callegari screaming to the heavens before embracing teammate Aidan Daniels.

It’s the kind of emotion you can’t fake and I ask what he thinks of the photo.

He says it’s a bit funny because he’s usually pretty relaxed but he loses himself in the emotion of a match the moment he steps on the pitch.

“I had actually never had a photo (that captured my emotions) like that before. I was glad to see it because it shows I’m putting my heart into what I’m doing and I love what I’m doing,” he says. “When you score at the end, with the supporters in that atmosphere, it’s not something you can control. It’s definitely true that I’m more emotive on the pitch but it’s because I love football. And football is made for this type of emotion.”

With only 10 games left in the season, the Wanderers are precariously perched somewhere between having a shot at winning the title and their first trophy ever and getting edged out of the playoffs. Only time will tell.

And as a result, Callegari says he is not looking to the future; anything that goes beyond the next training session or the next match has moved to the periphery.

“In my opinion, when you play free you find joy in the game. And part of the joy is the work you put in so when you let your instincts take over and work hard, that’s when you perform,” says Callegari. “Each match that I play is like a final. We can really achieve something fantastic and we need to take each match without thinking about the future. So in my head, each match is a final and we have to give it all.”

With that, we finish the interview, shake hands and head our separate ways on the Bedford Highway. In the Wanderers match that coming Monday, Callegari will register 133 touches and over 100 attempted passes.

Without the expectation which has followed him since his boyhood at PSG, Callegari seems to finally be playing free. And that’s good news for the Wanderers amid their title battle.

Cover Photo Credit: RWC Photography