Family, fun, football: A Concordia grad buys into the beautiful game

The team sits in first place in Italy’s Eccellenza (fifth tier), but hopes a strong showing this year will catapult it back to the Serie D (fourth tier), with the goal of returning to the Serie C (third tier), a level it had achieved in 2021 before being kicked down to the fifth tier over an unpaid tax bill. The comeback drama echoes the fictional travails of London team AFC Richmond in the Emmy-winning sitcom Ted Lasso, with similar underdog appeal.

Last November, TV personality Kelly Ripa and her husband, actor Mark Consuelos, joined the team’s principal owner, U.S.-based North Sixth Group, with a minority stake in the club. “We fell in love with the Campobasso project and the story,” Ripa told Forbes at the time.

Campobasso 1919 has the built-in advantage of having played at a higher level in recent years, although, as Pasto notes, “we had to start from scratch” in hiring a new coach and a number of players.

“It wasn’t scary at all,” he adds.

‘It’s bringing us closer as a family’

While Pasto emigrated to Montreal in 1967, when he was only 7 months old, he remains connected to his family roots in the Molise region east of Rome, Italy’s second-smallest province, he says.

When he entered Concordia in the mid-1980s after growing up in Montreal’s Ahuntsic neighbourhood and attending St. Pius X High School, he discovered a number of people who had roots in the same area.

“All my friends were going into the BComm at Concordia,” recalls Pasto. “But I think my background in psychology helped” in carving out a successful business career. “I knew how to deal with people.”

Along the way, he picked up an MBA/Master of International Business at Pepperdine University near Los Angeles.

For the last 20 years, Pasto has also taught CEGEP-level business and commerce at Vanier College, where his son Aiden studies business administration. But being part-owner of an Italian soccer team is, Pasto acknowledges, “taking up a lot more time than I thought.”

On the other hand, he considers it time well spent. “It has brought me much closer to my family in Italy, and to my family in Montreal,” he says. “It’s a reason to call Italy more often. We have a common interest.”

Soccer isn’t the only family passion. Attending Concordia is also on the list. Pasto’s wife, Lisa Marie Lanaro, BA 97, brother Luigi Pasto, BFA 21, and nephews Emilio, BA 18, and Sam, BA 23, are all Concordia grads.

And there’s another Canadian with an ownership stake in a European soccer team. Actor Ryan Reynolds owns a chunk of Wrexham, a Welsh-based team in England’s National League, while Joey Saputo, who owns CF Montreal, is also the majority shareholder in a consortium that owns Italy’s Bologna team in Serie A, Italy’s top tier.

“It’s a fun, honest thing to do,” Pasto says. “I see why people buy sports teams — we’re so excited! It gives you that extra level of fun.

“And you’re really proud if something good happens.”