BRUSSELS — Meet the EU official who has worked with Zlatan Ibrahimović and Ursula von der Leyen.
Ignazio Cocchiere has traveled the world, from New York to Brazil, as a policy assistant in the Cabinet of EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra since December, but he used to be a professional footballer who trained with legends including Ibrahimović, Patrick Vieira and Luís Figo — and later scored one of the most important goals in recent Belgian football history.
To this day, Union Saint-Gilloise supporters in Brussels sing Cocchiere’s name, after he saved them from relegation to the fourth tier of Belgian football with a crucial late strike against Leopoldsburg in a decisive late-season match in 2013.
The historic Brussels club — widely beloved by football fans around the European quarter, including past and present European commissioners — spent the next decade climbing back to the summit of Belgian football, culminating in winning the top division in 2025 and qualifying for this year’s Champions League: the pinnacle of European club football.
On Tuesday night, USG plays against Italian giants Inter Milan. The game has special significance for Cocchiere: He played for both clubs.
In an interview with POLITICO, the 38-year-old Cocchiere discussed his journey from playing in the same Inter Milan under-20 team as Italian maverick Mario Balotelli, to his pivotal role in saving USG from potential extinction, to working as an EU official in the Berlaymont — and why he wouldn’t change a thing.
“No regrets, zero. Because I would rather do my smaller football career and end up where I am right now,” Cocchiere said of his origin story, while wolfing down a bufalina pizza and Coca-Cola in an Italian restaurant near the Commission’s headquarters.
The significance of Cocchiere’s goal isn’t lost on senior figures at USG, not least current owner-chairman Alex Muzio, the benefactor of and mastermind behind the club’s ascension to the summit of Belgian football.
“Reality is that without Union legends of their time like Ignazio, there might not have been a club to revive,” Muzio told POLITICO.
Football nomad
A career path from parading the Italian under-20 winners’ trophy alongside the victorious Inter senior team in front of 80,000 raucous fans in Milan’s iconic San Siro stadium to eventually writing a thesis on the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism is untypical, to say the least.
Cocchiere started studying political science at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan after his season among the legends at Inter, a decision for which he credits his mother and father.
“One of the things I don’t regret at all is that I listen to my parents, who said, ‘we give you these small tips, please don’t leave your studies … go to a university, try it.’ When I look back, it’s so true,” he said.
From there, he began a nomadic football career, moving from Lombardy to Switzerland to Brussels to Flanders, all while stacking academic degrees in European and international politics.
Those stints in the inhospitable lower divisions around Europe, among hard-as-nails professional footballers whose salaries and livelihoods depend on a certain level of success, reinforced the necessity of pursuing a parallel career.
Not every young player making their way through the ranks has the career of an Ibrahimović or a Figo. For every Champions League superstar, there are 10 cautionary tales about what happens to unfulfilled talent when the bright lights dim.
“I’m lucky that I listened to my parents and also see a little bit when I was playing professional football. I don’t want to be that difficult guy at 35, 36. I saw really bad things in football, people fighting in the streets, fighting on the pitch, because if we don’t win, we don’t bring the salary home,” he recalled.
After finishing his studies, Cocchiere began working in the European Parliament in 2015 as an aide to Italian conservative MEPs Lorenzo Cesa and then Stefano Maullu.
After three years at the Parliament, Cocchiere moved into roles as a policy officer in the Commission’s sports unit (naturally), then a gig as a press officer in the spokesperson’s service and — eventually — in the Cabinet of Hoekstra, whose management he compares to that of a successful football coach.
‘Turning point’
Cocchiere’s association with USG began by accident, when he bumped into an old football contact from Inter while watching a game at the Petit Heysel stadium in the north of Brussels, after he moved to the EU capital to pursue his studies.
“He said ‘come to play here. This is a historical club. It’s not now, it’s in a really shitty moment, but in general we need players. They’re going down. You have to come to practice for a few days,’” Cocchiere recalled.
The club had won 11 league titles before World War II, but had spent years languishing down the Belgian football pyramid. The start of their improbable resurrection can be traced to Cocchiere’s last-gasp, left-foot volley against Leopoldsburg in May 2013, one of 29 goals he scored for USG.
Cocchiere told POLITICO that he’s as proud of carving out a successful career in the Brussels institutions as anything he achieved on the field — though the iconic goal that helped save USG holds a special place in his memory.
“Because that was a kind of turning point in the club’s history. So it’s something bigger than you. Something that is more for a club, for a community, for a city,” he said.
Between the possibilities football offered and the certainty academics delivered, does Cocchiere have any regrets about where he ended up? One of his former Inter teammates, Leonardo Bonucci, won the Euro 2021 championship for Italy and became only the sixth man to make more than 500 appearances for iconic club Juventus. Balotelli carried Italy to the Euro 2012 final and starred in the English Premier League for Manchester City.
“I think it’s probably the best decision — one of the things that I don’t regret at all,” he said.
But yes, he is still playing — now at Braine-l’Alleud, south of Brussels. Still trying to add to the 150-plus goals he’s scored in Belgian league football.
You never really kick the addiction.
The post The European official who saved the EU’s favorite football team appeared first on Politico.
