Cesc Fàbregas might just be the most important man not just in Como, Italy, but also in football right now. He is obsessed with perfecting football.
You know what makes it interesting? He is doing that with “Como 1907”
He is like their Messiah. And I know that sounds like a mad thing to say about a manager at Como, but see what is happening there.
Como were the only Italian club to win in the UEFA Champions League this week, beating RB Leipzig 4–1 in their FIRST EVER Champions League match. Then you look at the starting XI and notice something even more ridiculous.
Not one Italian. Which obviously looks bad for Italian Football, but a win for Spain. Seven of the starters had a connection to Spanish football.
Nico Paz (Real Madrid). Álex Valle (Barcelona). Jacobo Ramón (Real Madrid). Assane Diao (Betis). Luis Milla (Getafe). Anastasios Douvikas (Celta). Yan Couto (Girona).
People might rant and call it a Spanish colony, but I actually think it tells everything about the man building the team.
Cesc Fàbregas.
Because Cesc has been preparing for this job for almost his entire life.
He was a La Masia kid who grew up alongside Lionel Messi and Gerard Piqué. At 16, Arsène Wenger took him to Arsenal. Wenger had been watching the Barcelona youngsters closely and wanted Cesc, Messi and Piqué. Cesc was the one who left for London.
He arrived as a boy and somehow became Arsenal’s youngest-ever player at the time. Then the boy became the midfielder. Then the midfielder became the captain.
He played alongside Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires. He inherited the responsibility of running Arsenal’s midfield while still young enough to be asking adults for permission to stay out late.
That was always the strange thing about Cesc. He wasn’t built around athleticism. He was built around understanding.
The scout who discovered him described watching a kid with “a GPS in his brain”, an extraordinary vision, awareness, and decision-making.
We in Nigeria nicknamed him ‘Fabrepass.’ He holds a record for the Greatest Premier League Assist with that volleyed pass to André Schürrle against Burnley in 2014. Oh My!
He saw passes before they opened. He could slow a game down, speed it up, move defenders with one touch, and find a teammate nobody else had noticed.
Wenger saw it. Barcelona saw it. Spain saw it. Chelsea saw it. He was.. man
And every great manager he worked with added something to it. He was busy collecting football lessons from them.
At Barcelona, he returned to the football education that had shaped him, playing with Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets and Messi, four of the best, most intelligent footballers ever
At Chelsea, he learned another version of the game. Mourinho. Conte. Different demands, different football, different ways of controlling matches.
He won the Premier League twice. He won the World Cup. He won two European Championships. He spent roughly two decades sitting inside some of the best football classrooms in the world.
Then, in 2022, instead of simply finding somewhere comfortable to finish his playing career, he went to Como. Yeah, Como 1907
And this is where I think people miss the story. Cesc didn’t just join Como; he bought into Como. Literally.
He became a minority shareholder. And his old Arsenal teammate Thierry Henry joined the ownership group too, with Cesc helping convince him to invest in the project.
Cesc was still a player, btw, but you could already see where his head was going. He wasn’t thinking about the next contract; he was thinking about what the club could become.
Then he moved into coaching. From Primavera, then first team, and he took an interim role. Eventually, the permanent job.
And now a club that had only recently been fighting its way back up Italian football is playing Champions League football.
But the really fascinating part is how Cesc is building it. He isn’t simply buying the biggest names Como can afford; he is looking for football intelligence. Players who can understand space. Players who can play more than one position. Players who don’t need the manager standing beside them every five seconds telling them where to stand.
Cesc has spoken about giving his No.10s freedom because the best players understand what that role demands. He doesn’t want to turn intelligent footballers into robots.
He gives them the structure, then lets them play. That is very Cesc. Both as a player and a coach.
And that is why Nico Paz makes so much sense. A Real Madrid academy product with imagination, technical ability, and the freedom to find spaces rather than simply occupy a position.
It is also why the Spanish connection at Como is so obvious. Cesc knows that football ecosystem intimately. He knows the academies and the coaches. He knows the types of players coming through, and what Spanish football teaches.
So Como’s recruitment increasingly looks less like shopping and more like Cesc assembling the kind of footballers he believes in.
And there is another thing I love about this.
Cesc isn’t trying to make Como look like Barcelona. He’s trying to make Como Como. That’s the difference between copying a great club and building a football culture.
Their president, Mirwan Suwarso, has gone as far as comparing Cesc’s importance to Como with Johan Cruyff’s importance to Barcelona.
That sounds outrageous until you understand what he means.
Cruyff didn’t simply arrive at Barcelona and win matches, he changed the club’s idea of itself. He changed how Barcelona thought about football.
Suwarso believes Cesc is doing something similar at Como, creating a philosophy that can remain even after Cesc eventually leaves.
And that is why the people around the club speak about him differently. They don’t talk about him like some famous former player who came to Italy for a coaching experiment. They talk about him like one of theirs.
A man who invested his money, reputation, and future into the place before the rest of Europe cared. There is something deeply beautiful about that.
Cesc has already had the dream most footballers spend their entire lives chasing. He played for Arsenal, Barcelona, and Chelsea. He played for Spain and won almost everything.
He could have walked away satisfied. Instead, he found a club by Lake Como and decided: I want to build something here.
And maybe that is why I keep coming back to the idea that Cesc might be one of the most important men in football right now.
Because he’s no longer just trying to win a football match. He’s trying to create an environment where the next generation understands football the way he does.
And that’s the Xabi Alonso comparison for me. I don’t want to say it because he coaches Chelsea, but because their ideology is somewhat similar, especially in profiling players
Xabi took players like Florian Wirtz (Leverkusen) and gave them an environment where their intelligence could become the centre of the team; he also did so with Arda Guler in the little time he was at Real Madrid. And we have seen what he is doing with Cole Palmer at Chelsea now.
Cesc is doing something similar with the talent around him — giving players the freedom to think rather than simply follow instructions.
And when you watch Como now, you can see it. The recruitment. The Spanish influence, The young players. The experienced heads. The positional freedom. The confidence. The football. None of it feels accidental anymore.
Nine years ago, Como were nowhere near this conversation. Now they have walked into the Champions League and beaten Leipzig 4–1.
And somewhere on the touchline is the same kid who once left Barcelona at 16, carrying nothing but a football brain that Arsène Wenger couldn’t ignore.
Except now he’s not just using that brain to play football. He’s using it to build a club. And for the people of Como, maybe that is what Cesc really is.
Not just their coach. Not just their shareholder. Not just the World Cup winner who came to town.
He’s the man who made them believe their little club by the lake could become something nobody had imagined.
I hope Italian football as a whole can buy into his ideas, because he is the future.
Cesc Fabregas is going straight to the top.
Chikamso Okoye (Mr Focus)
