Como's route from Serie D offers Manchester United a working model

Key takeaways

• The BBC reports that Como have risen from Serie D, the top amateur level of Italian football, to a place in the Champions League.
• Each step of Como's climb meant meeting the sporting, financial and infrastructure conditions that Italian football sets at that level.
• Under the Champions League league-phase format, a newcomer with a low UEFA coefficient is usually drawn from a lower pot and faces stronger seeded opponents.
• The BBC frames the Como story as a lesson for Manchester United, which points to the gap between how coherently a club is built and how much money it spends.

Como's ascent through the Italian pyramid

The BBC's main point is the route itself. Como have moved from Serie D to the Champions League. To see why that is unusual, it helps to know how Italian football is arranged. Serie D is the highest amateur division, and it sits below the professional leagues: Serie C, Serie B and Serie A. Promotion between them is not just about results. At each step a club has to meet licensing conditions covering stadium standards, financial guarantees, youth structures and administrative compliance. A club that wins on the pitch but fails those tests can be refused admission to the division above.

That makes the climb a test of the whole institution, not only of the first team. A club moving quickly upwards has to raise its spending, staffing and facilities at the same pace as its league status. If it moves too slowly, it fails licensing. If it overspends, it carries debts into a division where income may not yet cover them. Many Italian clubs have gone through the reverse journey, collapsing and being re-founded at amateur level. That history is why a sustained climb in the other direction draws attention.

Once a club reaches Serie A, the route into the Champions League runs through the final league table. Serie A gets a fixed allocation of places based on Italy's standing in UEFA's association rankings. Under the current system, an extra place can also be earned for a country whose clubs perform well collectively in Europe over a season. To reach the competition, a club must finish in one of the qualifying positions and then pass UEFA's own club licensing checks.

The Champions League format a newcomer enters

A first-time participant arrives in a competition whose structure changed recently. The old group stage has been replaced by a single league phase. Each club plays eight matches against eight different opponents, half at home and half away. All participants are ranked in one table. The top eight go straight to the round of 16. The clubs placed ninth to twenty-fourth enter a two-legged knockout play-off. The rest are eliminated.

Opponents are decided by a draw in pots, and the pots are mainly based on UEFA's club coefficient. The coefficient rewards results in European competition over several seasons. A club with little or no recent European history usually has a low coefficient, so a newcomer like Como would generally expect a lower pot. A lower pot means facing clubs from the higher pots. That makes the league phase demanding for a debutant, though each match also carries more sporting and financial weight.

The money works the same way. UEFA pays participating clubs through several pillars. These include a fixed starting fee, payments for results and progress, and a value-based element tied partly to historical coefficient. A newcomer collects the starting fee and performance payments on equal terms. The value element favours clubs with long European records, so the structure gives established clubs a built-in advantage even when they fail to win.

Cesc Fabregas and the coaching identity

The BBC headline names Fabregas, Como's head coach. For a club rising quickly, appointing the coach is a structural decision, not only a sporting one. A promoted club usually has to change much of its squad each time it goes up. A consistent tactical idea gives recruitment staff a clear brief. They can look for players who suit a defined way of playing rather than for the best player available at a given price.

That link between coaching approach and recruitment is one of the main ways a smaller club can compete with richer ones. When the head coach, the sporting director and the owners agree on the type of player they want, the club wastes less money on signings who don't fit. Whether this alignment explains Como's progress in full is not set out in the material here. The BBC's framing, though, presents the coaching identity as central to the club's story.

Nico Paz and the recruitment model

The headline also names Paz, a midfielder who joined Como from Real Madrid in a completed transfer. His arrival shows a common route for ambitious mid-sized clubs. They sign young players from elite academies whose route to a big club's first team is blocked, and offer them regular senior football in a top division.

Such deals often include terms that keep a link to the selling club, such as buy-back options or sell-on percentages. The selling club keeps some future value, and the buying club gets a player it could not otherwise attract. The exact terms of any individual deal are a matter for official club statements and are not set out here. The general mechanism shows how a club without a long history can still access high-level talent.

The Manchester United comparison

The BBC presents Como's rise as having taught Manchester United a lesson in Europe. The material available here does not include details of any meeting between the two clubs, so this article draws no conclusions about one. The comparison stands as a structural point anyway. Manchester United have far greater commercial income, a much longer European record and, as a result, a much stronger position under UEFA's value-based payment system.

The contrast the BBC points to is between resources and organisation. A club with large revenues can still struggle if recruitment, coaching and ownership pull in different directions. A club with smaller means can do better than expected if those parts work together. UEFA's financial sustainability rules make this contrast sharper. They limit how much a club can spend on squad costs relative to its revenue, so for every club the efficiency of spending matters as much as the total.

What Como's rise says about the European game

Taken together, these points show how a club can rise even in a system that favours established clubs. The licensing rules at each level of the Italian pyramid, the coefficient-based seeding of the Champions League and UEFA's value-based payments all reward history. A newcomer starts at a disadvantage on every one of those measures.

Como's route, as the BBC reports it, suggests that disadvantage can be overcome. It takes owners willing to invest over a long period, a coaching identity that guides recruitment, and access to young talent through the transfer market. None of these removes the financial gap between clubs. Together they let a smaller club use what it spends more effectively.

The wider lesson is less about one club than about how European football works. Promotion and relegation, qualification through league position and UEFA's financial rules still leave room for movement between levels. The money in the Champions League tends to entrench clubs that are already there. The way clubs qualify still lets a well-run newcomer reach the top competition.

Sources and further reading

• BBC Sport, European football coverage: the report on Como's rise and the comparison with Manchester United
• UEFA, published regulations for the Champions League league-phase format and coefficient-based seeding
• UEFA, documentation on club licensing, financial sustainability rules and revenue distribution
• Lega Serie A and the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), rules on promotion, licensing and European qualification