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A club that was playing in Italy’s fourth division seven years ago will compete in the Champions League next season. Como 1907, coached by Cesc Fabregas, clinched a fourth-place finish in Serie A on May 24, 2026, after a 4-1 demolition of Cremonese coincided with AC Milan’s loss to Cagliari.
It is the first time in the club’s 119-year history that Como has qualified for any European competition. Not the Champions League specifically. Any European competition, period.
From Serie D to the continent’s top table
The numbers tell a story that would feel implausible in a football video game. Como finished the 2025-26 Serie A campaign with 71 points from 38 matches: 20 wins, 11 draws, and 7 losses. They scored 65 goals, the second-highest tally in the league, and conceded just 29, giving them the best defensive record in all of Serie A.
Fabregas joined Como as a player in 2022, a move that raised eyebrows at the time. A World Cup winner, a two-time European Championship winner, a former captain of Arsenal signing for a lower-league Italian side felt more like a lifestyle choice than a career decision. Then he retired and took over as head coach in 2023, and the lifestyle choice turned into something considerably more serious.
Promotion to Serie A followed in 2024. A 10th-place finish came in their first season back in the top flight. And now, Champions League football.
The Fabregas philosophy
Fabregas has built his coaching identity around developing young players. Rather than spending heavily on established names, he has invested in a squad whose average age skews younger than most Serie A competitors.
Fabregas himself called the achievement one of the greatest highlights of his career, which is saying something for a man who won the World Cup with Spain in 2010, consecutive European Championships in 2008 and 2012, and two Premier League titles with Chelsea.
Fabregas described the qualification as one of his greatest career highlights, reflecting on the young team’s potential and the strong late-season form that made a European finish feel attainable.
The Hartono factor
None of this happens without money, and Como’s financial backing comes from an unusual source. Robert and Michael Hartono, Indonesian billionaires, have owned the club since 2019. Their approach has been patient and strategic rather than the kind of sugar-rush spending that has sunk other ambitious projects in Italian football.
The ownership group also includes notable figures like Thierry Henry, Fabregas’s former teammate at Arsenal and Barcelona.
What this means for Serie A and beyond
Como’s qualification reshuffles the Italian football hierarchy in ways that will reverberate beyond one season. AC Milan, one of the most decorated clubs in Champions League history, missed out on qualification after their loss to Cagliari on the final day. A club from a lakeside city of roughly 85,000 people took their spot.
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