“I’ll always be older than him but now he’s the one in charge,” Como goalkeeper Pepe Reina tells The Athletic, speaking about his former Spain team-mate Cesc Fabregas, who is now his club-level manager.

Reina joined the Italians on a free transfer last summer after Fabregas convinced him to join the upwardly mobile project at the Serie A side.

The former Barcelona, Arsenal and Chelsea midfielder is now 37. Former Liverpool and Napoli man Reina is 42 but says the change in their relationship has not been difficult.

“It was a very quick call, 10 minutes, and the ‘mister’ (manager Fabregas) convinced me about the project,” Reina says. “For sure, Cesc is going to be one of the very top coaches. He has his ideas of football and also a pragmatism when it comes to communicating his message to everyone. He convinces you.”

Reina was not the only former colleague Fabregas got in touch with last summer. Sergi Roberto, the long-time Barcelona midfielder, was also convinced by his fellow Catalan’s ambition.

“Como called my attention for many reasons,” Sergi Roberto tells The Athletic. “The first was the boss — Cesc was my team-mate, my friend. Through the whole summer, we were talking constantly. I had some doubts, as Como had just been promoted from Serie B, but talking to Cesc, looking at the project, the ambition here, gave me confidence. Cesc was one of the keys for me to make this decision.”

Fabregas first got involved with Como as an investor, through his agent Darren Dein, son of David Dein, who was Arsenal’s vice-chairman during the Spaniard’s time at the Premier League club.

The former Chelsea and England midfielder Dennis Wise, Como’s chief executive at the time, also helped convince Fabregas to join the team as a player for the 2022-23 season, and he featured 17 times in Serie B, Italian club football’s second tier. After then retiring as a player, Fabregas stayed at the club as coach of Como’s under-19s setup.

Then in November 2023, Fabregas was promoted to interim head coach of the senior side, working alongside Welshman Osian Roberts, as he completed the required UEFA badges. After the duo led the team to promotion, Roberts returned to his role as Como’s head of development and Fabregas was confirmed as the full-time head coach on a four-year contract last July.

Como currently sit 13th in the Serie A table, nine points clear of the relegation places with seven games to go, but are seventh for possession percentage (54.3) and eighth for pass completion rate (84.8), hinting at the influence of Fabregas’ time at Barca with Pep Guardiola, and also lessons learned from Vicente del Bosque at Spain and Arsene Wenger at Arsenal.

“I had the good fortune at Barca to have many coaches whose idea of football was very similar,” says Sergi Roberto, who played with Fabregas for Barcelona from 2011 to 2014, winning six trophies, including the 2012-13 La Liga title.

“Each coach has their own variables, different things. But the idea of Pep, Luis Enrique, Xavi and now Cesc is to always have the ball, to press high when you lose it, to dominate the play. That is the general idea — then each coach adds their own differences.”

Como are also fourth for tackles per game (17.9) and fifth for dribbles per game (7.2) in Serie A this season, showing perhaps a more physical and direct influence of their head coach’s time working under more pragmatic managers in Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte during Premier League title-winning seasons at Chelsea.

“(Fabregas) has had the good fortune to have had many great coaches, and you learn from them all,” says Reina, who spent eight years together with Fabregas in the Spain national squad, winning Euro 2008, World Cup 2010 and Euro 2012 along the way.

“For sure, Wenger was a really important figure for him,” Reina says. “He taught him many things, which he now uses in his speeches, in his tactical ideas. But the team has kept evolving and adapting. We’ve been very chameleon-like. In some games, we’ve had to suffer, not having so much of the ball, looking to press really high up the pitch — and that is what competing is about.

“Like me, Cesc has played in four top leagues (Spain, England, Italy, France) and each brings you new things, to enrich your ideas and help your career.”

Asked what makes Fabregas different from Xavi and others in the Barcelona coaching tree, Sergi Roberto points to the amount of detail in scouting opponents.

“Cesc reads games very well and reads the opponents very well,” the 33-year-old says. “When it comes to preparing a game, he always has two or three options. And the truth is that, during games, what we have been working on during the week always happens. That speaks really well to Cesc as a coach.”

Como’s majority owner is the Djarum Group, a conglomerate owned by two billionaire Indonesian brothers, Robert Budi and Michael Bambang Hartono. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, they are together worth more than $35billion (£26.8bn), making them among European football’s richest owners.

When Djarum took control at Como in 2019, the team from a city in the north of Italy, a short drive from Milan, were in the fourth tier. Significant investment has helped them quickly climb the divisions, along with intelligent recruitment, which blended a core of players who knew the club pre-takeover with proven Serie A operators incentivised to drop down a level.

Last summer, the owners sanctioned a €50million (£43.3m/$56.8m at current exchange rates) transfer outlay on over a dozen players — the mix of arrivals included veteran Italy international striker Andrea Belotti from Roma for €4.5m (he has since joined Portugal’s Benfica on loan) and promising young playmaker Nico Paz from Real Madrid for €6m. Among the free transfer arrivals were Reina, Sergi Roberto, Raphael Varane (who has since had to retire due to a knee injury but became a board member) and ex-Liverpool and Villarreal left-back Alberto Moreno.

“For the project to keep moving forward, the primary objective was to stay in the division,” Sergi Roberto says. “They needed players used to competing at the top level and who could help the team a lot. At the start of the season especially, we lacked a bit of experience of Serie A. We dominated games but didn’t close out results.”

One of three goalkeepers in the squad, Reina has played 11 games so far, often captaining the side when he is in the XI.

“On the pitch, I’ve participated when they needed me,” Reina says. “But I know my role is above all off the pitch. What was needed was to instil more of a winning mentality in the dressing room.”

Among this season’s outstanding performers has been the Spain-born Argentina Under-21 international Paz. In what is his first top-flight campaign, the attacking midfielder has already scored six goals and made five assists. “Nico has an extraordinary level of talent,” Reina says. “He can still improve a lot more and he knows that. He’s a humble kid, with hunger to improve. But we must be careful. He’s just 20 years old and we cannot forget that.”

Former Tottenham, Everton and England midfielder Dele joined in the winter window, having not played at all since a loan spell at Turkish team Besiktas in 2022-23.

Dele has only played nine minutes in Serie A so far, a substitute appearance in January which was cut short by a red card. That was his first game for any club since February 4, 2023. However, Reina says the 29-year-old had shown in training that he could get back to the level which saw him earn 37 England caps between 2015 and 2019.

“(Dele) is a magnificent kid and an extraordinary player,” Reina says. “It’s not been easy. He was two years without playing. Everything needs time. But he’s on the way back and can be an important player again. At training, you can see he’s a different type of player who can do things that others cannot. For sure, he’ll return to be the player he was before.”

Como’s January strengthening also included spending a combined €40million on midfielder Maxence Caqueret from France’s Lyon, centre-forward Anastasios Douvikas of Celta Vigo and winger Assane Diao from another La Liga side Real Betis. Fabregas’ team have moved clear of the drop zone with results including a 4-1 home win against Udinese in January and a 2-1 defeat of visitors Napoli a month later.

Sergi Roberto’s contribution has been curtailed by knee and calf injuries, but he has recently returned to fitness and came off the bench in last week’s 3-1 away victory at last-placed Monza. Como host 10th-placed Torino on Sunday afternoon (kick-off 5pm UK time; noon ET). Another win will carry them 12 points clear of the bottom three.

“Our objective this year was to stay in Serie A and we’re close to that now,” he says. “I’m ambitious and I’d like to finish 10th (in the 20-team division) this season. We can achieve that objective.”

While Como 1907 (their full name) have been around for almost 120 years, as the club name suggests, football is not the first thing most people think of when the place is mentioned.

Lake Como has been a magnet for wealthy and distinguished visitors for at least two millennia. Among those to have more recently enjoyed its scenery — parts of Star Wars and James Bond movies have been shot on location there — and social scene are Brad Pitt, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Catherine Zeta Jones, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Fabregas himself first knew Como from staying at its lakeside €1,000 a night Villa d’Este hotel.

Como’s 13,602-capacity Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia is also right by the water, or “just a stone’s throw from George Clooney’s villa”, as the club website puts it. Visitors for Como games over the past few seasons have included Kate Beckinsale, Hugh Grant, Andrew Garfield, UFC welterweight Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson, Claudio Gentile, Jamie Vardy and UK rappers Aitch and Krept & Konan.

“When the actors and singers come to see the game, we don’t really get to speak to them,” says Sergi Roberto. “But we’re delighted that so many people want to see the team. The location is incredible, the lake is so beautiful. If they enjoy the game, see good football, then everything is perfect.”

Football royalty is also involved in Como — former France and Arsenal star Thierry Henry is another stakeholder in the club. Reina says he has not spoken to Henry yet and is not yet sure if he will continue playing next season (he will turn 43 in August), but he has no doubts about the ambition of this project.

“The foundations all started with Thierry, Cesc, Dennis; players with a lot of experience who saw something in Como,” Reina says. “And time has shown they were correct. Look at the transfer market in January: you can see the ambition here is maximum. Three or four additions in different positions would strengthen again this summer. We want to improve every year, and in the near future be fighting up near the top, qualify for Europe, and put Como’s name on the (football) map.”

Off the pitch, Como’s owners are also investing, with a training-ground modernisation completed last year, a stadium refurbishment and expansion due for completion by 2028 and a new youth academy also in the works.

“Staying up this season is really important,” Sergi Roberto says. “Being in Serie A creates the base for this project. We have young players with ambition, full of hunger to eat up the world, along with us experienced old heads.

“The mister (Fabregas) also has enormous ambition, and the club hierarchy, too. We’re all on that path to keep improving, keep climbing, so that everyone is talking about Como.”