The beautiful game

With all due respect, it is certainly a more picturesque approach than the one offered when you go to see Walsall at their Bescot Stadium. Como have the lake, the Saddlers have the M6. But the interesting thing is that both their grounds have a similar capacity of around 12,000.

My youngest son, Billy, 11, and I took a trip to the small lakeside town of Como last year – it is an hour by train from Milan Malpensa airport – to watch them play. Arriving, Billy looked out across the water to the evergreen banks beyond and said: “Dad, this is in Star Wars – Anakin Skywalker gets married here.” 

No wonder the future Darth Vader chose this place to tie the knot – or more precisely, no wonder George Lucas’s team picked it as a location. The view is simply stunning. 

Little wisps of clouds sit in intermittent lines between the water and the mountaintops, the deceptively vertical verdant banks are freckled with terracotta villas and the lakeside is studded with beautiful palaces, parks, private homes and £1,000-a-night hotels. Though if you’re smart you can find Airbnbs and modest albergos, Italy’s traditional hotels, with exactly the same views for far more reasonable prices.

At the heart of the town of Como sits its resurgent football club. They are back in the top division for the first time in 20 years, guided there by a smart young coach, the former Arsenal, Chelsea and Barcelona midfielder Cesc Fàbregas, who is bringing his own style of play to the Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia.

His team, which is holding its own in the big time, boasts an array of homegrown talent, like striker Patrick Cutrone, alongside young Nico Paz, who Fàbregas signed from Real Madrid and who has impressed to such an extent that the serial European champions are discussing whether to buy him back. There are survivors too, like the forward Alessandro Gabrielloni, who played for the club at it lowest ebb, in the fourth-tier Serie D.

The rise of this beautifully situated but somewhat obscure club has been compared to those of Wrexham and Girona. As in those cases, while a certain amount of romance is involved, a substantial amount of money is too. 

Indonesia’s Hartono brothers, the fifth-richest family in Asia courtesy of a thriving bank and tobacco business, bought little Como for just €850,000 in 2019, turning a side that was toiling near the bottom of the Italian professional football pyramid into the country’s wealthiest club. Today Como is valued at over €950m. 

The Hartonos’ first target was to get the town and its tourists excited about the team. After two promotions, you have to say that it is job done. The mayor of Como is now a regular at the ground, bouncing about like the rest of the everyday fans enjoying the influx of money, vision and ambition. 

Outside the ground, there’s the usual buzz of pre-match excitement and familiarity you find anywhere in the world an hour before kick-off. Clusters of fans spill on to the pavements outside bars, forgetting a recent defeat and bathing in temporary optimism before the tension of the match kicks in.

At the head of a three-man triangle of beer-drinking supporters, long-term fan Ricardo Bani is beaming as he tells me: “This is the most beautiful ground in Italy. Our king is Alessandro Gabrielloni. He’s been with us through all the divisions, he’s our Jamie Vardy!” 

Inside the stadium, Como’s veteran former Liverpool goalkeeper Pepe Reina is going through a pre-match shot-stopping routine. Around us in the covered stand, it is fairly clear that many of our fellow matchgoers aren’t struggling to find the money for a season ticket.

The men have a relaxed bonhomie and conspicuously unbranded style – they could have stepped out of the fashion pages of Forbes magazine. There are no pies and pints in this crew; instead they are finishing cigars and hugging affectionately. And in comparison to their English counterparts, the Italian fan has a better understanding of how to wear a football scarf – neckerchief style. 

Being in the VIP guest lounge area feels like being a guest at a very rich wedding. As the manager’s kids and their friends flit confidently across cordoned-off areas adults might be more wary of, I guess that is what’s going on – FC Como are getting married to success. 

Before kick-off we take our seats and wait for the impact of the special guests we’ve been quietly told about. Whereas at a wedding there’s usually one photographer, today there’s a whole row of them right in front of me, shooting over our heads. In their sights are actors Hugh Grant and Andrew Garfield, as well as the French World Cup-winning centre back Raphaël Varane. We end up sitting an arm’s length away.

On the end of the row, Varane smiles and engages with the supporters around him, comfortable in the football environment. In contrast, Grant and Garfield have become used to such a high level of public scrutiny that they permanently keep their eyes focused on close friends and distant objects.

When you see how many people are asking the stewards politely if they can get near them, this feels understandable. There are levels of fame, and both Grant and Garfield are Hollywood leading men. A visit to Como is becoming part of the attractions for stars filming or holidaying in Italy; a week before our visit, Kate Beckinsale was in attendance.

In the match, Como fall behind but when they score an impressively well- worked equaliser, the photographers get their shot as avid Fulham fan Grant leaps and punches the air. 

Fàbregas has the team playing well, he seems to operate a double pivot with two creative midfield players in his own image down the spine, one in front of the other. 

At half-time my sons and I find ourselves behind a velvet rope with drinks, cake and Varane, who has won the Champions League four times with Real Madrid and had a recent spell at Manchester United. We chat about Eric Cantona, saying he wants to throw the Old Trafford directors into “a big bag of shit” for stripping former manager Sir Alex Ferguson of his annual £2.5m ambassadorial fee.

When I point out Ferguson will still be a director, Varane replies like a seasoned PR exec: “That messaging was extremely badly handled.” 

I’m introduced to Mrs Fàbregas and ask her if her life as a manager’s wife is stressful. She nods in agreement. “Every kick, always, for ever.”

Guiding her husband and the rest of those charged with continuing Como’s resurgence is Mirwan Suwarso, the owner’s representative in charge of shaping and directing the redevelopment of the club and its associate business offerings.

He tells me the story of an investment that could have turned sour but has ended up very sweet indeed: “I was running the Hartonos’ TV and digital division here in Italy and I wanted a reason to stay. So we came up with the idea of buying a lower-division football club and bringing young Indonesian players to play here, a fish-out-of-water sort of thing, and to film their progress. 

“Then after we’d bought it for €850,000, we discovered that because Italy had failed to qualify for the World Cup, (Serie A) had put restrictions on the number of overseas, non-EU players. So we had a football club and had to work out what to do with it. 

“So we decided to bring in an American and get him to run it, and started filming that. Now we just want to do as well as possible with the club and the team. 

“Making a difference in people’s lives is the best definition of success for us. We aren’t just here to be profitable, we obviously want the club to be profitable, but these guys have a lot of money so there is no point doing it if the society, the community, don’t benefit from it. That’s been key to everything – to work with the community, to have them involved, to get their point of view, anyone can email me. What would be the point of being profitable if we didn’t make that difference to their lives?”

As for what – apart from his bosses’ money – is fuelling this remarkable story, Suwarso is clear. “The lake is our biggest asset,” he says. “Como is in a unique proposition in the market because of its location and the beauty. Billy Beane (the US baseball analyst whose story was told in the book and film Moneyball) described our deal as the best investment in sport.” 

All afternoon, the seaplane cruises around the water. Beneath it in the open stand, a fan with a megaphone drives call-and-response chanting. It’s a unique mix of executive wealth and street-level passion. The football they play is good too.

James Brown is an author and magazine editor