Inter’s English Revolution: A Shift in Serie A
Inter have spent 118 years barely touching the English market. This summer, they’ve torn up that habit in a matter of weeks.
John Stones, Djed Spence and Curtis Jones have all walked through the doors at Appiano Gentile in the same window. Three Englishmen in one summer – as many as the club had signed in more than a century of existence. It’s not a tweak. It’s a shift.
Stones bets on a new life at 32
For Stones, the move is a line in the sand. He turned 32 in May, his Manchester City contract ran out a month later, and for the first time in his career he was truly free to choose.
After a decade under Pep Guardiola, after a lifetime in English football, he wanted something different.
"It was something I had always wanted to do and, when this opportunity came up, I spoke about it with my family, and we were certain: we wanted to come here," he told Inter’s media channel.
He sounded like a man who had already closed one book and opened another.
"I want to learn new things, understand a new way of playing and experience a new league. I can't wait to start this new chapter and this new journey. I couldn’t imagine a better place to do it."
For a defender, it makes sense. Serie A may no longer hoard the Ballon d’Or contenders the way it did in the nineties and early 2000s, but for players at the back it still carries a certain mystique – and a serious examination of the brain.
AC Milan and England centre-back Fikayo Tomori once described that difference to The Athletic with striking clarity. In England, he said, intensity is about running and pressing – “We’ve got to be at them, run harder than them.” In Italy, it hits you in the head first.
"Here, it's mental not only in the preparation for the game and dealing with outside pressures and fan expectation," he explained. The demand is to stay locked in for the full 90 minutes, knowing opponents are waiting for the one lapse, the one misstep, and then they pounce.
"It seems easier than you think," Tomori said. "But it's a lot harder to be in the game for 90 minutes because here there are a lot of things where teams are waiting for that one moment when one player out of 11 makes a mistake and then they strike."
That is the kind of environment Stones is walking into. Less chaos. More chess. Fewer sprints, more traps.
Spence returns to a league that hardened him
Spence already knows what that feels like. He had a six‑month spell at Genoa in the second half of the 2023-24 season and it clearly left its mark.
"You learn so much when you play abroad," the full-back said. "I can say I became a man when I was abroad and I'm grateful for the experience."
Those months in Liguria didn’t scare him off. They pulled him back.
He also isn’t buying the old argument that leaving the Premier League means waving goodbye to the England squad. Tomori, at times, paid a price for choosing Milan during Gareth Southgate’s tenure, his Serie A form not always translating into call-ups. The league’s European record in recent years has hardly helped its image either; too many early exits, not enough trophies.
Inter, though, have cut against that trend. Two Champions League finals in three seasons between 2023 and 2025 put them back on the map. Even last year, when they were stunned by Bodo-Glimt in the play-off round, they left an impression on one particular opponent.
Jones follows the feeling from San Siro
Curtis Jones faced Inter with Liverpool and didn’t forget it.
"I played against them for Liverpool and they're a team that loves having the ball," he told Inter’s official website. "There are players here who can score lots of goals, create assists and make plenty of chances. You can feel how united this squad is. Inter can compete with the very best teams in the world."
What really sold it to him, though, was not a tactical blueprint or a medal count.
"You can also feel the hunger that's here, and, as I've already said, the support from the fans is unbelievable. The Inter supporters really are the 12th man."
He kept coming back to that night at San Siro.
"The biggest thing was the feeling I had last season when I played against Inter in the Champions League and experienced the passion their fans have for the team. Of course, you can also talk about the trophies, the Club's history and all the great players who have worn this shirt. But the fans were the decisive factor. I was out on the San Siro pitch and I could hear them singing and supporting the players throughout."
For an English midfielder who had only known one club, one culture, one rhythm, that noise clearly stayed with him.
The pull of San Siro – on both sides of the divide
Tomori, on the red-and-black side of the city, knows exactly what Jones is talking about. He lives that atmosphere every other week.
"Having these ultra passionate fans who just sing for 90 minutes. Not even 90 minutes. They’re there before we’re out warming up," he said of the Milan support. "They’re there after the game. Even that in itself is another nuanced thing that makes it so special."
He used to try to explain it to friends back home. The words never quite landed.
"I feel like, even my friends, I used to tell them about it, but they never really understood what I was saying until they actually came to the stadium."
Tomori has become something of an unofficial ambassador for Serie A in English dressing rooms. He told Ruben Loftus-Cheek about the Giuseppe Meazza before the midfielder made his own move to Milan. When Tammy Abraham was weighing up Roma, Tomori’s message was simple and direct: "Bro, this is a really good league!"
The glamour may not match the peak years of Ronaldo, Zidane and the rest, but the competitive edge and the tactical depth remain. As Micah Richards has argued, "Serie A is very, very underrated."
McTominay’s Italian blueprint
For Jones, there was another modern case study to look at: Scott McTominay in Naples.
The Scot, like Jones, spent his entire senior career at one English club – Manchester United – before deciding he needed a new stage, and crucially, regular minutes in his best position. He found both at Napoli.
Two years later, the Lancashire-born midfielder is a scudetto winner and one of the most adored figures in the club’s history. His popularity in the city has drawn comparisons with Diego Maradona. It’s not just about the goals.
McTominay has thrown himself into everything. Language, history, architecture, culture, food. He has even become evangelical about the local tomatoes.
"It was a huge decision for me, but at times in your life you just have to go for it," he told The Times. "To hit the ground running in Serie A isn’t always easy. A lot of players go and struggle to find their feet because it’s slightly different to the Premier League. It’s more tactical."
"So, it's not easy going abroad, but it’s been quite seamless for me, to be fair, in terms of how much the Italian people have helped me settle."
That is the path now in front of Jones. The bar set by McTominay in terms of impact, trophies and cultural immersion is high, maybe impossibly high, but the template is there: leave the comfort of home, land at the right club, and grow.
A new kind of English colony
Jones arrives at San Siro not as a lone pioneer but alongside Stones and Spence, into a side that has just established itself as the best in Serie A.
That changes the equation. English players used to cross the Channel in ones and twos, often into struggling sides or unstable projects. They were isolated. Italy really did feel like “living in a foreign country”.
This time, three compatriots walk into a champion dressing room together, into a club that has shown it can still go toe-to-toe with Europe’s elite.
If they get this right, Inter’s English summer might not just reshape their own careers. It might reopen a door that too many Premier League players have been scared to walk through.
