There is something extraordinary about where Como are now and how quickly they got there. Barely four years after Cesc Fabregas arrived at a club that he says did not even feel properly professional, Como are preparing for Champions League football. For anyone who loves football trips, football weekends abroad, and discovering clubs with a real sense of place, this rise has turned one of Italy’s most beautiful destinations into one of the most compelling football stories in Europe.

What makes it even more fascinating is that the transformation did not begin on the lakefront glamour of Como itself. It began in Mozzate, a quiet rural town in Lombardy, the sort of place most people pass through on the way to Milan or Malpensa airport. That is where Fabregas goes to work. And when he first joined the club in 2022, the reality was a long way from the polished image now associated with Como’s spectacular rise.

From chaos in Serie B to Champions League football

Fabregas does not romanticise the early days. He remembers a club that lacked even the most basic foundations.

“There was no training ground,” Fabregas recalls. “They were telling you Tuesday we train here, Wednesday we train there. There was no gym, no restaurant, no nutrition, zero.”

At that point, Como were in Serie B, but in Fabregas’ eyes, they still fell short of being a proper second tier club.

“It was not a second division club,” he says. “It was not a professional club.”

The leap from that to Champions League qualification is remarkable. After a 1 0 win over Parma at the Sinigaglia on the penultimate weekend of the season secured European football, players and staff celebrated in commemorative shirts that read “Como si dice Europa?” A week later, after another victory away to Cremonese in a Lombardy derby sealed fourth place, the shirts had to be updated. Now the slogan read “Como si dice Champions?”

That little detail captured the speed of it all. The ambition had always been there, but not even the club expected to get this far so quickly. Como had been bankrupt and buried at the bottom of the football pyramid less than a decade earlier. Promotion to Serie A in 2024 was their first return to the top flight in 21 years, and the stated target at that point was to reach Europe within five years. Instead, they have arrived there early, and in the grandest company of all.

A club changing as fast as its manager

Fabregas sat for the interview the morning after an open top bus parade through Como. He was in the same room at the Sinigaglia where he had first signed for the club. The stadium itself, nearly 100 years old and built in the rationalist style of the Fascist era, has also gone through a transformation. President Mirwan Suwarso has filled it with period pieces sourced from flea markets and antiques fairs to create an atmosphere that feels closer to a five star hotel than an old football ground. A villa has even been purchased and turned into a private members’ club for entertaining guests.

It all speaks to a wider vision. Como want Champions League visitors, UEFA officials, and executives from Europe’s biggest clubs to feel they are arriving somewhere special. For supporters drawn to European football travel and memorable football stadium experiences, the Sinigaglia is becoming exactly that kind of destination.

Fabregas’ own journey mirrors the club’s evolution. When he first began coaching, he was thrown into the Primavera, Como’s Under 19 side, with barely a squad to work with.

“They gave me a group of lads. I couldn’t sign anyone,” he remembers. “We had three defenders, seven midfielders and 11 strikers or something like this. I had to invent. I was playing with two No 10s as full-backs.”

That improvisation, perhaps, shaped the way he sees the game now. Flexibility has run through his coaching from the start.

Why Fabregas rejects easy narratives about Como

Como’s success has brought plenty of praise, especially after the club secured their highest ever finish and reached the Coppa Italia semi finals for the first time in 40 years. But criticism has also followed, particularly in the context of Italy’s failure to qualify for a third straight World Cup. Some observers have questioned Como’s apparent lack of trust in Italian players. Edoardo Goldaniga was the only Italian to play any league minutes for them this season, and even then, it totalled just 15 minutes.

Fabregas pushes back hard on the idea that Italians were not central to the project.

“All these players nobody mentions,” Fabregas says. “I can tell you 15 players.”

He points to the core inherited from the third tier, players such as Alessandro Gabrielloni and Alessio Iovine, and the later additions of Simone Verdi, Daniele Baselli, Alberto Cerri, Marco Sala, Alberto Dossena, Federico Barba, and local favourite Patrick Cutrone. Gabrielloni’s importance was such that a statue of him has even been unveiled at the entrance to the Sinigaglia.

That matters because Como’s current image as a stylish, forward thinking club built around young talent and clever recruitment did not appear from nowhere. It was layered carefully over time, with different phases requiring different types of players.

How his football evolved from survival to identity

Fabregas is clear that the Como of 2023 could not play like the Como of 2026. When he took interim control of the first team in the winter of 2023, he inherited a squad built for Serie B pragmatism under Moreno Longo.

“The team played 5-4-1, a lot of counter-attacks and defended very deep,” he says. “I couldn’t change everything straight away in the middle of the season. So I preferred to change the defensive phase more than the offensive side. We went to a back four instead of a back five, zonal, not so much man-to-man and a little bit higher.”

In another league, those tweaks might sound modest. In Italy, they are more meaningful.

“My first exercise as a coach was a rondo,” Fabregas recalls. “Pum, pum, pum, pum, pum. Then when you lose the ball, animals to press, to break the lines of passing.”

As transfer windows came and went, the squad started to move closer to what Suwarso has described as Fabregas’ “clear and uncompromising vision”. The January 2024 arrivals of Gabriel Strefezza and Goldaniga gave Como more balance and more options.

“When we could bring in (Gabriel) Strefezza and Goldaniga in January (2024), they were two important players who gave us a little bit more stability and more solutions for how we wanted to play. We started playing 4-2-2-2 with two strikers, two 10s and two sixes without wingers.

“And I’m a big fan of wingers! But we had no wingers in our squad so we had to change the way we played and it was really good. I found another system I loved. The dynamics were really good with the ball and we started growing, growing, growing, winning, winning, winning.”

Recruitment at Como starts with the person, not the player

One of the most interesting parts of Fabregas’ project is how strongly he emphasises personality and mentality over pure football ability. Much has been said about Como’s use of data and their relationship with Jamestown Analytics. Less attention, he feels, has been given to the human side of the recruitment work, and in particular to the influence of his assistant Dani Guindos.

When Como sign a teenager from somewhere like Real Madrid or Real Betis, Fabregas wants it understood that these are not random bets.

“This is me and Dani,” Fabregas says. “He coached Jacobo Ramon and Nico Paz when he was in the academy of Real Madrid. So he knows them very well, he knows their personalities. The first thing we look at is the person. In my first meeting with a player I don’t speak about football. I only speak about their personal life. I want to identify their mentality, explain who we are, how we do things, how we work. The players and the families are more important than anyone. You mark some clear things about the culture of the team and the club and then after that we start talking football.”

That is revealing. In a game where many clubs still treat recruitment as a numbers exercise or a market opportunity, Fabregas wants connection, trust, and belief.

“I know these boys,” he says. “And talent aside, I believe in them.” Then, covering his eyes with his hands, he adds: “I believe in them blindly and when a coach believes blindly in his players — look, there are always things you cannot control — but you will always get the best out of the player or do better than someone who brings them in because they have good data but the coach doesn’t trust or know the player.

“It requires more time to get to know them. What I don’t understand is sometimes clubs sign players without speaking to the coach or without the coach studying and speaking to the player.” This makes Fabregas laugh, incredulously. “It’s the coach who needs to make these players play and make them better.”

The joy of development and the feeling of ownership

Suwarso has credited Fabregas with “transforming the club into a University of Football”, and there is plenty on the pitch to support that idea. Nico Paz won Serie A’s Rising Star award last year and this season was named Midfielder of the Year. Only Federico Dimarco produced more assists than Jesus Rodriguez. Jacobo Ramon and Maximo Perrone both progressed impressively. Lucas Da Cunha, reimagined by Fabregas, ended the season in Opta’s Serie A Team of the Year after scoring twice against Cremonese on the final day.

Fabregas lights up when talking about that side of the job.

“I love developing players,” he says. “You tell me a part of my job that I love, it is spending time with the players, especially the younger ones and making them better or trying to make them better. I analyse situations with them. I analyse the idols that they have. I give them my opinion. They give me their opinion, and then we go out on the pitch and work on it individually. Then you’re trying to do a little bit more collectively. Then, on the pitch you see if they can apply it as fast as possible, the things that you are working on. That’s why I feel they are my boys. I treat them like they are my kids. This relationship is very important.”

There is a warmth in that, but also a sense of responsibility. He does not sound like a coach merely assembling a team. He sounds like someone building people.

The signings nobody talks enough about

For all the focus on the headline names and promising youngsters, Fabregas is keen to highlight the more understated signings who helped shape this season. Ivan Smolcic and Mergim Vojvoda are among the lower profile figures he sees as important. Yet the player he singles out most enthusiastically is goalkeeper Jean Butez.

Como signed the 30 year old from Antwerp for just over €2million 18 months ago. Even Fabregas admits that, on paper, the move did not scream certainty.

“I looked at the data. It was good data from Jean but not top, top data,” Fabregas says. “We were looking for a player who can play with the feet in a good way for our style of play. But when you watch his videos, his games, his performances, most of the time they didn’t press him or in Belgium maybe they don’t press so high in that league or he was playing long balls all the time.

“So it was very difficult for me to find clips, performances and games where he was applying what I’d be asking of him or doing what he’d be doing here. So we took the risk and he’s been outstanding. I’d love to tell you and pretend I saw it and that I identified it. No, no, no. He’s been such an amazing surprise. He gets the football that we want to play very, very, very fast. We always try to give three, four solutions. He always finds you a fifth one that is better than the ones you (gave). He’s been a really fantastic, fantastic signing for us. He changed our style of play for the better, and changed our mentality.”

That honesty is striking too. Coaches do not often volunteer that a signing exceeded their own expectations. Fabregas does, perhaps because he is confident enough in the wider idea.

Continuity changed everything

Last January, Como made a deliberate decision not to keep overhauling the squad. That stability proved crucial.

“It’s the first time that, as a coach, I had for one full year without having to change and it helped us,” Fabregas says. “It helped us to have this continuity, to keep growing.”

The results that followed were extraordinary. Como beat Juventus home and away for the first time since the 1950s. They went unbeaten against reigning champions Napoli and knocked them out of the cup. They outplayed Roma at the Sinigaglia. By the end of the season, they had the best defence in Serie A and had become one of only four teams to concede fewer than 30 goals in a single season in this decade.

Those achievements matter beyond the league table. They show that Como are not just a romantic story or a fashionable stop on an overseas football trip. They have become a serious football team with a deep identity.

Why Italy forced Como to keep evolving

Fabregas is especially thoughtful when talking about tactical adaptation. Early in the season, opponents pressed Como high and went man to man, hoping to force mistakes. Then teams realised just how comfortable Butez and the rest of the side were under pressure. So they changed. They started sitting deeper, using low blocks, and making matches more about breaking resistance than escaping pressure.

That, for Fabregas, is where Italy becomes uniquely demanding.

“Here a lot of teams think about how to eliminate you by pressing and defending, not by attacking,” Fabregas says. “That means a team that wants to win needs to be ready to break down a defence that has been created to cause you pain, to kill you. This requires more attention to detail.

“How do you get away from all these duals in man-to-man with a team that physically isn’t the strongest team? We are a team with talent and technical ability. Physically we’re not animals. Let’s put it this way. They want to bring you into the context of the duals. They know you’re going to play. So you need to take them into positions where they’re not comfortable and try to attack their weaknesses.

“Winning in Italy, believe me, people say there are a lot of 0-0s and 1-0s, it’s difficult. Trust me, I analyse a lot of football. I watch the Bundesliga, La Liga and the Premier League. Teams defend very, very differently to how they defend in Italy. You watch Premier League teams, you see a structure. You see what they’re trying to do. You see the style they want to apply. Here a lot of the times it’s impossible. It’s impossible to understand what’s happening. That’s why you need to pay great attention to detail.”

It is a brilliant insight into why Como’s rise has been so impressive. They have not simply built a nice style and stuck with it. They have adjusted constantly in one of the most tactically suffocating environments in Europe.

Getting ready for Champions League nights by the lake

Now the challenge changes again. Next season brings Champions League football, and Como believe they will meet UEFA requirements around stadium, squad, and finances. The Curva Ovest was knocked down after the final home game of the season so a new permanent stand can be built. Last summer’s Como Cup, which featured Ajax, Celtic, and Al Ahli, will return in the form of Football On The Lake and act almost as a trial run for what is to come.

There has also been quiet work behind the scenes to prepare the squad list. Como have been signing players such as Lorenzo Bonsignori and Samuele Pisati from the academies of Atalanta and AC Milan in order to satisfy UEFA’s locally trained player rules.

All of it points to a club thinking ahead in smart, deliberate ways. And the imagery of it is hard to ignore. The Champions League anthem echoing across Lake Como. Floodlights reflecting on the water. A football stadium experience unlike almost anything else in Europe.

That is why Como now feel so relevant to supporters planning football weekends abroad or dreaming about a more unusual football tour. This is not just a club with momentum. It is a club with atmosphere, scenery, identity, and a clear football philosophy.

Como are no longer the romantic outsider

Fabregas’ work has helped turn Como into one of the most intriguing clubs in Europe, but the message from within is that the outside world still underestimates what they have become. Suwarso made that point directly in an open letter to supporters.

“We are not a little club anymore,” he wrote. “Actually we never were.”

There is something bold in that line, perhaps even a little defiant. But it fits. Como are no longer just a nice story by the lake, nor a novelty stop for football travellers. They are a Champions League club shaped by vision, patience, recruitment clarity, tactical intelligence, and a coach whose first instinct is to understand the human being before the footballer.

That may be the most telling part of all. In a sport that can feel rushed, transactional, and impatient, Fabregas has built something that feels personal. And now, with European football arriving at the Sinigaglia, the rest of the continent is about to see where that approach can lead.