MILAN — Cesc Fàbregas was soaked in champagne, his players singing the Champions League anthem through hoarse voices, and the giant speaker still blaring from the corner of the room. It was the image of a club that seven years ago was playing in Italy's fourth division, and on Sunday clinched a place in Europe's elite competition.
Como finished fourth in Serie A after winning 4-1 at Cremonese, leapfrogging AC Milan, who lost 2-1 at home to Cagliari. Roma had already secured their spot by winning 2-0 at already-relegated Hellas Verona. The mathematics were simple: win and you're in. Como did precisely that.
The scale is the story here; once the field gets this big, the calendar starts doing some of the reporting.
"When I arrived four years ago as a player we changed in a bar, today we're in the Champions League," Fabregas said. "We had massages in the back room of a bar, in a field. And today, less than four years later, we're going to play in the Champions League."
The squad is remarkably young. Fifteen players who logged the most minutes are nearly all under 23. That youth and the investment from Indonesian tobacco billionaires Robert Budi Hartono and Michael Bambang Hartono, who purchased the club in 2019 when it was in Serie D, have carried Como from nowhere to history in what feels like a single breath.
AC Milan finished one point below Como in fifth. Juventus, who let slip a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 at Torino in a match that kicked off an hour late because of fan trouble, ended a point further back in sixth. Both miss out.
Antonio Conte's final match as Napoli coach was a 1-0 win over Udinese, securing second place. Inter Milan were already champions. Lecce beat Genoa 1-0 to stay up, sending Cremonese, Verona and Pisa down to the second division.
From bar changings to the Champions League
This is a club that has never participated in any continental competition in its 119-year history. It changed in a bar. It trained without a sports center. Now it belongs among the best in Europe. That trajectory is the kind of story Serie A needed — and the kind that usually only happens in far less serious contexts.