Fàbregas outwits Gasperini to take controversial Como a step closer to Champions League | Nicky Bandini

For once the TV cameras at the Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia had not picked out a Hollywood A-lister in the stands, but a celebrity of calcio instead. Gennaro Gattuso, the Italy manager, as well as a World Cup and Champions League winner, had come to watch Como play Roma.

A crucial game in the race for Europe, the teams having started the weekend level in fourth place. And still a slightly surprising one for Gattuso to pick. Not because it lacked the history and traditional importance of Lazio’s game against Milan later that evening, but because Como do not have any Italian players for him to watch.

Only two are named in the first-team squad on the club’s website – the centre-back Edoardo Goldaniga and goalkeeper Mauro Vigorito, who have played one minute in Serie A between them this season. If Gattuso chose to catch a game by the lake this weekend, it can only be because he wanted to check in on some of Roma’s players – Gianluca Mancini, Bryan Cristante, Lorenzo Pellegrini and perhaps the emerging talent of Niccolò Pisilli.

Unless, that is, he went to Como for something different: a chance to see a team that has played some of the best football in Italy this year and ask if there are lessons worth taking. Saturday’s game was a duel of tactical concepts between two of Serie A’s most highly regarded coaches, from which Cesc Fàbregas emerged the clear winner.

Roma played the way Gian Piero Gasperini’s teams most often do, taking on man-to-man assignments and pressing with ferocious intensity. That approach yielded results almost immediately, with Stephan El Shaarawy intercepting a pass by Sergi Roberto and drawing a foul inside the box from Diego Carlos. A small Italian triumph to celebrate? It was a Dutchman, Donyell Malen, who stepped up to convert the penalty.

Como could have felt undermined by such an early misstep. Instead, they carried on with conviction: playing out from the back, passing through the press until the ball reached the feet of Martin Baturina and Maxence Caqueret, the ones most ready to spin and to dribble.

It is easy to oversimplify when we talk about tactics, to pit “modern” and “fluid” against “tired” and “predictable”. The game is not rock, paper, scissors. Roma scored their goal because in that moment they executed their plan better.

But as the half progressed, details of Como’s strategy emerged: Caqueret dropping deeper from his position behind the attack on the right, seeing how far he could get Mario Hermoso, on the left of Roma’s defence, to come with him. Jacobo Ramón, notionally playing on the right of Como’s back three, advanced to fill open spaces.

Such lines were pursued not so much with courage as outright audacity. In the 38th minute, Ramón was the furthest man forward as he attacked the penalty area from the opposite side of the pitch, meeting a cross from Lucas Da Cunha and narrowly failing to convert, kneeing his attempt on to the post.

‘Como are a strong team, but I don’t respect the way they behave on the pitch or on the bench,’ said the Roma coach, Gian Piero Gasperini. Photograph: Ciro De Luca/Reuters

Como’s rapid rise, from the fourth tier to competing for Champions League qualification in the space of seven years, has earned them celebrity fans, but also plenty of hostility. Rival supporters – and even managers – have lamented the unfairness of competing against a club whose billionaire owners, the Hartono brothers, have spent more than €200m on transfers since they were promoted in 2024.

The lack of Italians representing Como has also been a stick to beat them with, though Fàbregas insists they have sought domestic talent. “We have been trying to bring through as many as possible, I promise you,” he said last August. “I do the analysis, I look to see which Italians we could bring in who could raise the level of our team, but we’ve had an incredibly hard time.”

All the best ones, he argued, were “already at Inter or Juventus”. Fàbregas said Como were instead prioritising the development of young Italian players in their academy.

Nobody could blame him for having a more immediate focus on making the strongest team possible right now. On Saturday, the Italian football magazine Rivista Undici released video clips from an interview with Como’s president, Mirwan Suwarso, who acknowledged their club was a stepping stone for the manager towards bigger things.

“We would be stupid not to think that Fàbregas one day will go to Arsenal, Barcelona or Chelsea,” he said. “If he keeps winning with us, if he keeps being successful, I cannot speak for him, but he may have bigger dreams.”

Suwarso claimed not to have set Fàbregas targets, saying there was no demand to qualify for Europe. His own priority, he said, was to move the club towards long-term profitability. But reaching the Champions League would serve everybody’s ends and beating Roma would be a significant step towards it.

Como trailed 1-0 at the interval despite having dominated. They had started with Nico Paz – the greatest of the team’s many young talents – as a false nine, but his finishing was poor.

Fàbregas made a pair of attacking changes at half-time, sending on Assane Diao, a winger, and Tasos Douvikas, a centre-forward, to replace Sergi Roberto and Marc-Oliver Kempf, a holding midfielder and defender respectively. It was Douvikas who equalised in the 59th minute, timing a run behind the defence to meet Álex Valle’s through-ball and send a composed finish past Mile Svilar.

Here was the sharp edge Como had been missing. They looked the more likely team to go on and win and the odds tilted more strongly in their favour when Wesley was sent off for Roma five minutes later.

At full speed the decision to show him a second yellow card looked obvious. Wesley had appeared to impede Diao as they ran toward the Roma penalty area, but on replays the contact was anything but clear. The Como player went down easily, and it was a different opponent – Devyne Rensch, not on a booking – who might have done more to cause it.

A player up against opponents feeling the fatigue from a Thursday night Europa League game against Bologna, Como pressed their advantage. Roma defended doggedly, but in the 79th minute Ivan Smolcic fizzed a shot through a crowd Svilar could only parry. Diego Carlos forced home the rebound.

The game finished 2-1 to Como, moving them three points clear of Roma in fourth place with nine games to play, as well as jumping them back in front of Juventus, who had beaten Udinese on Saturday.

Gasperini went down the tunnel without shaking Fàbregas’s hand, an act the Spaniard highlighted in subsequent interviews, calling it a “matter of sportsmanship and respect”. There was no attempt at conciliation from his opponent. “Como are a strong team,” said Gasperini. “But I don’t respect the way they behave on the pitch or on the bench.”

The story unfolding at the Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia this season is not to everyone’s liking. It tends to go that way, where one team’s joy is another’s disappointment. It is not for Fàbregas or his players to worry about pleasing their rivals or indeed the Italy manager. Como are closing in on what would be their first European qualification. And playing some very good football as they do it.