Of all the Scottish players to have graced Serie A in recent years, Kieron Bowie may well have had the most eventful start.
The striker joined relegation-threatened Hellas Verona from Hibernian midway through last season. Thrust into a sink-or-swim situation, he somehow ended up doing both.
Bowie’s four league goals included strikes at the Allianz Stadium and San Siro to earn draws against Juventus and champions Inter, but he was ultimately powerless to prevent the Gialloblu’s slide to relegation.
An eye-catching half-season wasn’t enough to convince Steve Clarke to bring the 23-year-old to the World Cup as part of his Scotland squad, a gut-punch of disappointment to go with the demotion.
Bowie could only watch on from afar as his nation toiled in front of goal in the United States, but if his momentum from last season continues, the next Scotland manager will find the Kirkcaldy-born striker hard to ignore.
His goals and performances in a Verona shirt ensured he ended the campaign with a respected and growing reputation on the peninsula, making a Serie A switch look likely well before his move to Sassuolo was confirmed last week.
Kieron Bowie made a big impression in a short space of time at Verona
‘In just a few months in Italy he has shown his value,’ said Sassuolo sporting director Francesco Palmieri. ‘He has important characteristics and is still quite young. I’m convinced that he can contribute to this group and help us take steps forward.’
Bowie has joined the Neroverdi on a season-long loan with the option to buy, linking up with Josh Doig at the Mapei Stadium after completing an express version of his fellow Scot’s career path; the left-back swapped Easter Road for Verona in 2022 before joining Sassuolo a year-and-a-half later.
They are two of seven Scots currently on the books of Serie A clubs, along with Scott McTominay and Billy Gilmour at Napoli, Lewis Ferguson at Bologna, Che Adams at Torino and Lennon Miller at Udinese.
Doig lost his starting spot in the second half of last season, but the player who usurped him in the pecking order, Ulisses Garcia, has since returned to parent club Marseille, and the former Hibee could benefit from a coaching change too.
Alberto Aquilani’s appointment as the successor to Fiorentina-bound Fabio Grosso was one of the more intriguing Serie A coaching changes of the summer.
The 42-year-old former Liverpool midfielder has only two seasons of senior coaching experience on his CV, both at Serie B level, but has a growing reputation as one of Italy’s rising star tacticians – and Bowie was his first major new signing.
Bowie will stay in Serie A on a season-long loan with Sassuolo, who have an option to buy
‘He’s a young and important player, with useful abilities that we are lacking right now,’ Aquilani said of the Scot. ‘He will definitely give us a hand.’
Other notable names in the Sassuolo ranks include ex-Manchester United and Chelsea midfielder Nemanja Matic, just four years Aquilani’s junior at 38, star winger Armand Lauriente and club legend Domenico Berardi.
Veteran Matic is the exception rather than the norm in the squad, as Sassuolo have a reputation as a launchpad club, where talented youngsters are given opportunities and enterprising football is encouraged.
That has been the case since they earned promotion to Serie A for the very first time back in 2013 and took Italian football by storm by qualifying for Europe two years later under Eusebio di Francesco.
Explaining why he chose Sassuolo last summer, Matic said: ‘They explained how the club works, the importance of youngsters… it’s great to have so many young guys around, I can be useful and explain a few things to help them develop.’
Italy internationals like Giacomo Raspadori, Francesco Acerbi, Manuel Locatelli, Gianluca Scamacca, Matteo Politano and Davide Frattesi all made their names in Neroverdi shirts, while others have earned big moves off the back of strong seasons, most recently Tarik Muharemovic with a £34million move to Leeds United.
Talent-spotting and squad building have been key to the club’s success in establishing itself as a Serie A regular; they have been relegated just once since first reaching the top-flight in 2013 but bounced straight back up as Serie B champions in 2024-25 before kicking on to finish in an impressive 11th last term under Grosso.
Bowie in action for Scotland Under-21s against Spain’s World Cup sensation Pau Cubarsi
One major change and challenge this summer, though, has been the departure of one of the main architects of that success, CEO and general manager Giovanni Carnevali, who joined Juventus after 12 years in post.
During Carnevali’s tenure, Sassuolo became an established Serie A force, qualified for Europe and opened a new training facility.
None of that was a given, despite the club having wealthy owners behind them in the form of the Squinzi family, owners of chemical product manufacturing giant Mapei.
Sassuolo’s roots are otherwise modest. The town, situated in Italy’s northern Emilia-Romagna region not far from Modena and Bologna, has a population of around 40,000 and a stadium so small that the club instead bought what is now the Mapei Stadium in Reggio Emilia, 30km (19 miles) away, to use as their home ground.
Only five clubs in Serie A own their stadium (Juventus, Udinese, Frosinone and Atalanta are the others), but Sassuolo have always struggled to attract big crowds as a small-town club with limited success. As such, the home support is often outnumbered by the travelling contingent, particularly when the big clubs come to town. For Bowie, that might be no bad thing; all four of his goals for Verona came on the road, as did his sole assist against Parma.
The Scot’s main competition for the starting striker spot in the season ahead will be Andrea Pinamonti, a 27-year-old Inter youth product who scored nine goals for the club last season and has hit double figures in three of the last five Serie A campaigns. Pinamonti is still waiting for a truly prolific breakthrough year but will likely begin the season as first choice.
The squad-building for 2026-27 is still ongoing, with young midfielder Vasilije Adzic signing from Juventus on Monday to bolster Aquilani’s options as his vision takes shape.
The young coach starred for the likes of Roma and Fiorentina as a cultured midfielder during his playing days and had a spell with Sassuolo towards the end of his career too.
Expectations of entertaining football are high, if Gazzetta dello Sport’s headline on a clip of a passing move in a pre-season friendly is anything to go by: ‘Aquilani like Guardiola? Sassuolo’s move is out of a video game.’
The hype comes after he led unfancied Catanzaro to the Serie B playoff final last season following a sabbatical year spent studying his coaching contemporaries.
Former Liverpool midfielder Alberto Aquilani is the Sassuolo manager and is highly regarded
‘[Roberto] De Zerbi is a friend, I talk to him almost daily, and whenever I could, I went to Marseille,’ Aquilani told Gazzetta dello Sport. ‘[Cesc] Fabregas had piqued my interest, so I went to see him at work. He inspired me, I wanted to talk to him.’
Despite his lack of Serie A experience, Aquilani is getting his own players excited as well as the press and fans.
‘Aquilani definitely knows football…together we want to go to Europe,’ Matic said.
‘He was joking,’ Aquilani later smiled in response. ‘It’s fine, ambition must be part of our way of thinking.’
Whether a glorious return to Europe is on the cards or not, Bowie will likely find the chances come easier than they did in Verona with the likes of Berardi and Lauriente around him and Aquilani in the dugout.
The last six months may have been a whirlwind for the Kirkcaldy man, but he’s just getting started.
