Meet Valentina Giacinti

Valentina Giacinti joined Como 1907 on 23 January 2026 with the kind of CV that usually changes the temperature of a dressing room before she has even taken her first training photo. FIGC had already placed her in the Italian football Hall of Fame, she had already led the scoring charts in Serie A three times, and she had already scored the sort of international goal that follows a striker around forever, the one that sent Italy into a World Cup quarter final against China in 2019. 

The surprise, if you want to call it that, was the route back. After time abroad with Galatasaray SK Women, she chose to return to Italy and to Serie B with Como, which is not the default path for a player with her medal drawer and her history. That is where the conversation begins, with a simple question from Heather O’Reilly, delivered in the relaxed tone of someone who has lived inside elite locker rooms long enough to know that the best answers are usually the least rehearsed.

“Vale,” she says, checking the nickname first, and then moving straight to the point. You have been away, you have done everything, why this, why now.

Giacinti does not dress it up. “Honestly, what attracted me most were the people who contacted me, the people who really pushed to bring me here,” she says. In the summer I opted for an experience abroad, I needed to find myself again in many ways, and I chose another project.” But the January call landed differently. “When the call came in January, I could not say no, because I saw that the people working here looked at the person first, before the footballer. For me, that is essential when being part of a team, and that is why I am truly happy to be here.”

The club framed it the same way in its announcement. Heather O’Reilly called her “a major addition” and pointed to more than goals, “her work for the group,” and the idea that “in top level sport you cannot stand still.” Giacinti, for her part, said she was “impressed by the people at the club and how hard they worked to bring me here,” and repeated the line that has become her north star, “the person comes before the player.” 

If you want the cleanest summary of what Como have signed, it is this, a striker who has been the country’s reference point for goals across a decade, and who still speaks like someone trying to earn her place again. The numbers do not need exaggeration. FIGC list her as Serie A top scorer in 2015 to 2016 with 32 goals for Mozzanica, then again in 2017 to 2018 with 21 for Brescia Calcio Femminile, then again in 2018 to 2019 with 21 for AC Milan Women. At AS Roma Women, a club profile described her Serie A output as 182 goals in 233 appearances and noted she was the first player to reach 50 goals in a Milan shirt.

There are also the moments that turn a career into a story people retell. One of them came in the derby against Inter Women in March 2021, when AC Milan Women went behind and Giacinti scored four times. The club match report called it “historic,” noted she reached 53 goals for Milan, and placed her alongside José Altafini in a piece of Milan derby trivia that almost sounds invented until you read it twice.

Another is international, the kind of goal a striker carries like a passport stamp. At the 2019 World Cup, she scored in the round of 16 win over China that took Italy into the quarter finals, a moment that The Guardian framed as part of Italy’s return to relevance on the biggest stage. 

And then there is the thread that runs through all of it, the childhood version of the dream that never really leaves. When FIGC inducted her into the Hall of Fame, Giacinti spoke about holding the Italy number 9 shirt and remembering the first national team match she watched on television, not the opponent, just the attacker wearing 9, Christian Vieri. She said that from that day she always dreamed of being the Italy number 9, and she told the next generation to keep working through the difficult moments because dreams do come true. 

That line matters in Como because it reframes what “experience” is supposed to do. It is not meant to make you comfortable. It is meant to make you useful.

So when Heather O’Reilly asks what she can add to a team already halfway through its season, Giacinti answers like someone who understands the job. “I hope to bring the experience I have gained over all these years,” she says. “I am rejoining players I played with years ago, and I am also finding people with a lot of experience and leadership, this creates a united, strong team. I want to be an added value to a team that is already doing very well, and I hope I can contribute goals and bring my full self, 100%.”

She did not wait long to turn that into something concrete. In her Como debut against Bologna FC Women, she came on in the second half and scored the fourth goal in a 4 to 2 win, a neat introduction to a new league and a reminder that habits travel. 

The way she talks about football is revealing too. When asked what kind of player people should expect, Giacinti keeps it simple. “I like to attack space in behind. I like to play with the team, and I like to work for the team. I think it is very important today for a striker to help the team in different situations, and to score.” It is a modern striker’s answer, less about the penalty box as a destination and more about the lines you run to make the pitch feel larger for everyone else.

You can hear the same team first thinking when she speaks elsewhere about leadership. In a UEFA interview during her time at AS Roma Women, she talked about a squad built on accumulated responsibility, naming a captain, former captains, and the way experience stacks inside a group. It is consistent with what drew her to Como. She is not looking for a stage. She is looking for a structure she can trust.

Which brings the conversation back to the part she does not romanticise. She says she needed time for herself. She says she needed to find herself again. Public reporting around her career includes at least one significant physical setback, a knee ligament injury during her Fiorentina spell in 2022 that required a long recovery, the kind of interruption that forces even the most prolific striker to renegotiate patience. She does not offer extra detail beyond that personal line in this conversation, and she does not need to. The point is that she has lived the hard parts, not just the highlight reels.

When Heather O’Reilly asks what keeps her going now, after all the goals and the clubs and the international nights, Giacinti gives an answer that feels closer to craft than ambition. “It is difficult to say. I want to bring my experience, but also keep growing personally. I want to bring something different, my character, into the team. I can bring my experience to this team, on the field and off the field, and I can help the team with my leadership. I would like to help the team grow and reach Serie A immediately.”

O’Reilly laughs at that, because it is also the simplest articulation of the project. Me too, she says, and you can hear the shared horizon in it. 

Asked what living here might do to her daily life, after Milan and Rome and Bergamo and Turkey, Giacinti talks about scale, charm, and routine. “I love the city centre, I love walking along the lake, I have already done it many times, and I am happy to be in this city.” It sounds like lifestyle, but it is really about rhythm. A striker who feels settled moves differently. A striker who feels properly held by her environment plays freer.

And that is the quiet promise inside this move. Como is not asking her to become someone new. It is asking her to arrive fully as who she already is, with experience, standards, and a hunger that has never really left. Giacinti has always been at her best when the match is moving faster than the words around it, when she can read the line, choose the run, and commit before anyone else sees it.

She finds space.

Now she has chosen a place that seems designed to give her the room to do it again.