The idea of luxury football in Serie A with Como 1907

Kate Beckinsale, Thierry Henry, Cesc Fabregas, Guè Pequeno, and the two billionaire Indonesian brothers Hartono, owners of the Djarum company, one of the world's leading producers of clove-flavored cigarettes, perfectly illustrate the first appearances of Como 1907 in Serie A 2024/25, returning to the top flight after more than twenty years of absence. It seems like the plot of a dream, a script written by an author in a state of confusion, but all the mentioned personalities have indeed occupied the seats of the Giuseppe Sinigaglia stadium in this first month and a half of the season. But let's go in order. Cesc Fabregas is the head coach of the Como club—not just temporarily, as he has obtained his coaching license and signed a four-year contract this summer. Thierry Henry is one of the shareholders of the club: during the last home game against Cosenza in the 2023/24 season, valid for the Serie B championship, he was seated next to Jamie Vardy. Various transfer rumors had speculated about the arrival of the Leicester hero at Como, which were later denied.

Robert Budi Hartono and Michael Bambang Hartono, with a net worth exceeding $45 billion, are the owners of the club. They acquired Como in 2019, restructuring it and enrolling it in Serie D, launching a project that has progressively brought the team back to professionalism. After years of work and sacrifices, the club regained Serie B in 2022, thanks in part to Dennis Wise, former Chelsea midfielder, who initially served as a consultant and then, from 2021, as sole administrator: he was the one who chose to hire Fabregas as the club's coach. In short, it is a solid organization from which we can expect a lot, both in terms of sports performance and entertainment, tourism, and more. We had interrupted the list of names without mentioning Kate Beckinsale and Guè Pequeno. The former, a British actress, was considered one of Hollywood's rising stars in 2001, when Pearl Harbor was released, and she achieved stardom with the release of Underworld two years later. Never far from the gossip spotlight, just five years ago, she had a brief relationship with Pete Davidson, just to outline the profile of the latest celebrity who visited Giovanni Sinigaglia.

Guè Pequeno, on the other hand, is one of the protagonists of the Italian rap scene and an entrepreneur who has never hidden his obsession with money, always accepting financial offers without making too many fusses, thus maintaining an enviable intellectual honesty over the years. His opening concert, held during the warm-up of Como-Hellas Verona, represents a complete novelty for European football; it's the most Americanized thing a European club can do. Guè Pequeno's performance was accompanied by a DJ set, an initiative also adopted in the past by Juventus: every two weeks, the then Juventus Stadium hosted nationally and internationally renowned DJs to liven up the stadium atmosphere. However, Juventus, which is undoubtedly the most avant-garde club in Serie A in terms of entertainment, had never thought of inviting an artist to sing before the kickoff. With this initiative, Como 1907, in its small way, has created its mini Super Bowl: it is highly likely that other artists will perform on the Sinigaglia stage during the 2024/25 season.

What kind of club Como is trying to be right now and what its future intentions are is still being defined. What is certain is that, for the football reality that could emerge, distancing itself from the identity belonging to the city would be a colossal mistake. There are no football clubs with the same potential as Como to become inseparably linked to the identity and perception of the city's residents and tourists. It would have been within the scope of Venezia, but beyond the quiet luxury of its Kappa branded kits (the only note of tangible opulence was the gold-plated crest, a stylistic choice now set aside by Nocta), the club preferred to preserve at least in part a popular spirit, the iconicity of a stadium rising on a lagoon, the beers drunk by its trusted striker Joel Pohjanpalo, and no kind of luxury experience included at the Pier Luigi Penzo stadium, nor any star-spangled approach that would have been fully in line with Duncan Leigh Niederauer.

And if Como's home matches became a favorite destination for tourists? Like it or not, it would be a unique phenomenon in European football: a place where one can enjoy football in a suit and tie, amidst champagne flutes and a lunch with a view of the stadium in the company of Hollywood faces. Alternatively, an even more mystical turn that the Lombard club could take was initiated in the match of the sixth round of Serie A 2024/25 against Hellas; on one side of the stand, Kate Beckinsale, the first to celebrate Patrick Cutrone's goal, and on the other, Guè Pequeno, a certainly original way to convey opulence and wealth, albeit at two different layers of society. The right scenarios are needed to make correct choices, and Como 1907 is the right reality to introduce a novelty in European football: welcome to the Wimbledon of football, at the Giovanni Sinigaglia stadium.