Como's climb from Serie D to Europe and its lesson for Manchester United

Key takeaways

• The BBC reports that Como have risen from Serie D, the fourth tier of Italian football, to the Champions League, and have now taught Manchester United a lesson in Europe.
• Como's project rests on a clear football identity under Cesc Fàbregas, with recruitment, coaching and playing style all pointing the same way.
• Signing young players with high potential, such as Nico Paz, is a market model that relies on development value rather than established reputation.
• For Premier League clubs working under spending rules, the main point of the comparison is that coherent planning can matter more than how much a club spends.

Como's rise from Serie D to the Champions League

The BBC reports that Como have gone from Serie D to the Champions League. Serie D is the highest amateur level in Italy and sits below the three professional divisions. To reach Europe's top club competition from there, a club has to win promotion through each tier and then finish high enough in Serie A to qualify for UEFA's competitions.

Each step works differently. In the lower divisions, success usually depends on organisation, budget discipline and being able to absorb the costs of moving up. Serie D clubs work with limited professional infrastructure, and every promotion brings new licensing duties: stadium standards, youth sections and financial guarantees. Once a club reaches Serie A, the job changes. It has to compete for players against clubs with much larger established revenue, and its league position now decides access to European places.

Climbing that whole ladder means rebuilding the club several times over: its squad, staff, facilities and commercial operation. This article does not cover how quickly Como did it or what it cost. The structural point is that a club cannot simply buy its way through every level, because each division sets its own limits on how quickly money turns into results.

Cesc Fàbregas and the coach-led model

Fàbregas is named in the BBC's framing of the story, and his role shows a model of club building that Premier League clubs have tried with mixed consistency. In a coach-led project, the head coach's idea of play shapes recruitment: the kind of player the club looks for, the profile of the squad and the way younger players are brought through.

In this model, the coach and the recruitment department have to agree on what the team should look like on the pitch. If that agreement holds, a player signed in one window still fits after a change of personnel in the next. If it breaks, clubs often end up with squads built for several different managers at once, where each new coach inherits players picked for someone else's system.

Many observers see this as the main difference between clubs that build steadily and clubs that keep restarting. This article does not assess whether a particular coach is succeeding. The mechanism is what matters: continuity of football ideas lowers the cost of every later decision.

Nico Paz and the development-based transfer market

Paz is the third name in the BBC's headline. His move to Como is a completed, officially confirmed transfer, and it shows a model that mid-sized and rising clubs use more and more. Instead of competing for established internationals at peak prices, they sign young players whose value lies mostly in their future development.

The economics are simple. A club that cannot match the wages and fees of the richest teams can still compete by offering playing time, coaching and a pathway to a player who has none of those at a bigger club. Big clubs, in turn, sometimes let promising players go with contract terms that keep some link to their future, such as buy-back options or sell-on percentages. The exact terms of this deal are not covered here.

For the buying club, the risk is that development is uncertain and the most successful players are likely to attract bigger clubs. The benefit is a squad whose market value can rise faster than its wage bill. Under spending rules that measure costs against revenue, that gap is a real competitive advantage.

Manchester United and the comparison

The BBC frames Como's progress as a lesson for Manchester United, delivered in a European setting. This article does not say what happened in any meeting between the clubs and draws no conclusion from it. The comparison works without a scoreline.

Manchester United are one of the highest-earning clubs in world football, with global commercial reach and a large stadium. Como come from a much smaller base and arrived at the top of the European game only recently. The contrast is useful because it separates two things that are often treated as the same: how much a club can spend and how well it is organised.

In the Premier League, the gap between the two matters more because the league runs its own financial rules. Clubs have to keep losses within set limits over a rolling period, and the league is moving towards measuring squad costs against revenue. Under those rules, a club that spends heavily on players who do not fit its system loses twice: it pays the money, and it uses up room it could have spent elsewhere. A club that recruits efficiently can stretch the same budget further.

What Como's rise tells us

Together, the three parts of this story point to one idea. Como's rise, the coach-led structure under Fàbregas and the development-based recruitment shown by the Paz signing are not separate successes. Each makes the others possible. A clear football identity tells recruiters who to sign, development-focused recruitment keeps costs manageable, and a well-run cost base lets the club move up without the financial strain that has hurt other promoted clubs.

This matters for the Premier League because its financial rules are designed to reward this kind of coherence. Rules that tie spending to revenue limit how far wealth alone can carry a club, and they make the quality of each decision count for more. The richest clubs still have large advantages, but the margin for error is narrower than it once was.

The comparison also shows the limits of the lesson. Rising clubs often benefit from low expectations, patience from owners and supporters, and the freedom to sell players without crisis. A global club under constant scrutiny has less room to wait for long-term plans to work. Copying the model is harder than describing it.

No one knows yet whether Como can keep this up while playing in European competition, which adds fixtures, raises wage expectations and attracts interest in their best players.

Sources and further reading

• BBC Sport: the report on Como's rise from Serie D to the Champions League and the framing of the club's lesson for Manchester United.
• Premier League: published handbook material setting out the league's profitability, sustainability and squad cost rules.
• UEFA: regulations on club licensing, financial sustainability and qualification for its club competitions.
• Lega Serie A and the Italian football federation: material on the structure of the Italian pyramid, promotion and licensing requirements.