Inter's Summer Signings: A Historic English Influx
Inter have spent the summer raiding an unlikely market: England.
John Stones, Djed Spence and Curtis Jones have all walked through the doors at Appiano Gentile in this window, meaning Inter have now signed as many English players in a few weeks as they had in the previous 118 years of their existence. For a club steeped in Italian tradition, it is a remarkable pivot.
Each arrival comes with a different backstory. Together, they sketch a picture of why Serie A – and Inter in particular – suddenly looks so appealing to Premier League stalwarts.
Stones swaps Manchester comfort for Italian scrutiny
John Stones turned 32 in May. His Manchester City contract ran out a month later. After a decade under Pep Guardiola and a career spent entirely in England, he chose a leap into the unknown.
"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.
There was no sense of doubt in his words. Stones wanted a different kind of education.
"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."
On paper, the move makes perfect sense. Serie A no longer rules Europe as it did in the 1990s and early 2000s, but for defenders it still carries a particular mystique. This is the league that treats concentration as an art form and tactical detail as a religion.
Fikayo Tomori, who crossed the city divide to join AC Milan, explained the difference to The Athletic in stark terms.
"In England, intensity is, 'We've got to be at them, run harder than them' - everything like that," the England defender said. "Here, it's mental not only in the preparation for the game and dealing with outside pressures and fan expectation.
"What they value so much here is being concentrated and locked into the game for 90 minutes. It seems easier than you think. 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."
Tomori called it a different kind of intensity – one built on focus and fear of the single lapse.
"Having that intensity, in terms of concentration, in terms of we can't make a mistake, or we have to make as few mistakes as possible. Obviously it's impossible to not make a mistake, but to make the least mistakes possible to win this game. That is an intensity in itself and something I had to get used to when I first got here because there is so much information."
For Stones, who has thrived in Guardiola’s positional puzzle, that challenge feels almost tailor-made.
Spence returns to a league that hardened him
Djed Spence knows exactly what awaits him. He has already done the crash course.
The full-back spent the second half of the 2023-24 season on loan at Genoa, a six-month spell that clearly left its mark.
"You learn so much when you play abroad," Spence said. "I can say I became a man when I was abroad and I'm grateful for the experience."
Plenty of English players have worried that leaving the Premier League might cost them an international career. Under Gareth Southgate, Tomori often felt the consequences of playing his football in Serie A. Italian clubs’ mixed results in Europe have hardly helped the perception.
Spence, though, did not see Italy as a dead end. He saw growth. Responsibility. A different kind of pressure. And now he has traded Genoa for a club that has spent the past few years punching above the league’s collective weight.
Inter, the outlier of Italian football
Serie A’s reputation has sagged in recent seasons, dragged down by underwhelming European campaigns and financial constraints. Yet Inter have refused to follow the trend.
They reached two Champions League finals in three seasons between 2023 and 2025. Even last term, when a shock play-off round defeat to Bodo-Glimt cut their campaign short, they left an impression on those who faced them.
Curtis Jones certainly felt it.
"I played against them for Liverpool and they're a team that loves having the ball," he told the club’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 him, though, was not a tactical blueprint. It was the noise.
"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.
"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 a player raised at Liverpool, where atmosphere is part of the club’s identity, that counts for a lot.
San Siro, the shared cathedral
The stadium Jones now calls home has long been a selling point for both halves of Milan.
Tomori, who hears the same roar in red and black, still sounds slightly awestruck when he talks about it.
"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. "They’re there after the game. Even that in itself is another nuanced thing that makes it so special. 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."
The atmosphere became part of his recruitment pitch. Tomori spoke to Ruben Loftus-Cheek about the Giuseppe Meazza before the midfielder joined Milan. When Tammy Abraham was weighing up Roma’s offer, he also reached out.
"Bro, this is a really good league!" came the message.
Serie A is not what it was in its heyday, when the world’s best players flocked to Italy, but the old stories still carry weight. So do the new ones.
The McTominay effect
Micah Richards once called Serie A "very, very underrated". You only have to look at Scott McTominay’s transformation in Naples to understand why English-based players are suddenly more open to the idea.
"McFratm", as the locals now call him, left Manchester United after years of being shuffled around roles and expectations. He wanted regular minutes in his preferred position. He found them at Napoli.
Two years on, the Lancashire-born midfielder is a scudetto winner and one of the most adored figures in the club’s history. His status in the city has reached near Diego Maradona-like levels, not just because of his goals but because he has thrown himself fully into Neapolitan life.
"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."
His story has not gone unnoticed back in England. For someone like Jones, who had spent his entire career at one club in one league, the example is compelling: go, play, grow.
A new English colony in black and blue
It is probably unfair to expect Jones to replicate McTominay’s impact, on or off the pitch. Napoli and Inter are different beasts, different cities, different demands.
But Jones is not heading out alone. He is joining the reigning force in Serie A at the same time as two compatriots, under a coach and within a structure that has consistently maximised talent.
That matters. So does the simple fact of numbers. For decades, English players in Italy were isolated pioneers, often battling culture shock as much as tactical shifts. Now Stones, Spence and Jones walk into a dressing room where their own accents will echo back at them.
For that reason alone, Italy may feel a little less like "living in a foreign country" than it did for so many Brits who tried their luck on the peninsula in years gone by. The question now is not whether they can survive there, but how far this new English core can drive Inter in the seasons to come.
