There are evenings in football that feel bigger than the scoreline they produce, and Tuesday at the Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia in Como was very much one of them. The 0-0 draw between Como and Inter Milan in the first leg of the Coppa Italia semi-final was not a match defined by its goals — because there were none — but by everything else surrounding it. The atmosphere inside one of Italian football’s most intimate and historic venues, the tactical chess match between two managers with completely different philosophies, and the quiet, extraordinary reality that Como 1907 had just contested a Coppa Italia semi-final for only the second time in their entire history. The previous occasion was the 1985/86 season, a two-legged tie against Sampdoria. Forty years separates those two experiences. Everything that has happened to Como in between them makes Tuesday night feel like something more than just a football result.
Cesc Fàbregas had urged the Como supporters in the days before the match to turn the Sinigaglia into a little Bombonera, and the crowd who packed into that tight, steep-sided ground did exactly that. It holds just 13,602 people and yet the noise it generates has surprised and unsettled opponents throughout this season. Inter Milan, a squad that had navigated the loudest and most intimidating atmospheres in European football for the past two decades, will not have been immune to it, and the crowd’s role in keeping the match tight and competitive right from the very first minute should not be underestimated. Como fed off that energy and used it effectively across the first half in particular, pressuring Inter higher up the pitch than the Nerazzurri had perhaps expected and winning individual duels across the park with a physicality and urgency that made Inter’s preferred build-up play considerably more difficult than it tends to be against Serie A mid-table opposition.
The context of this fixture deserves more than a passing mention. Inter Milan arrived as heavy favourites by almost any rational measure. They had beaten Como 4-0 at San Siro back in December in Serie A, a result so one-sided it barely required analysis — the better side won comfortably, the gap between the clubs in terms of pure squad quality was obvious, and almost nobody came away from that evening feeling the result had been particularly controversial. Inter also carried an unbeaten run of 14 meetings against Como into Tuesday’s tie, and in nine Coppa Italia meetings between the clubs across their history, Inter had never lost to the Lariani. The statistics were clear. The hierarchy was established. And yet, as the 90 minutes unfolded on Tuesday night, none of that weight seemed to sit on Como’s shoulders in the way it might have done.
Part of the explanation for that is what Fàbregas has built at Como in a remarkably short space of time. The former Arsenal, Barcelona and Chelsea midfielder, who brought the same analytical, possession-oriented philosophy to management that defined his playing career, has quietly overseen one of the most impressive projects in European football this season. Como sit fifth in Serie A with 48 points, one ahead of Juventus, with the third-best attack in the division behind only Inter and Juventus and the second-best defensive record alongside AC Milan. Thierry Henry, himself a shareholder in the club, made waves recently by stating that Como were playing the best football in Italy right now — a claim that would have seemed laughable six months ago but now carries a quiet credibility that even Inter supporters find difficult to fully dismiss. Nico Paz, their Argentine playmaker who had become one of the most exciting young players in Serie A this season, and the Greek forward Tasos Douvikas with twelve goals across all competitions, give Como genuine weapons that most clubs in their position simply do not possess.
Inter came into the match carrying their own complications. Their elimination from the Champions League at the hands of Bodo/Glimt had sent tremors through the club, with manager Cristian Chivu facing pointed questions about his substitution timing and squad selection in European competition. The Coppa Italia offered a different kind of redemption — domestic silverware, a final at the Olimpico in Rome, the kind of trophy that fans can hold onto when continental disappointment still stings. Chivu named a lineup that balanced the need for competitive quality with an awareness of the second leg at San Siro still to come. Bisseck, Acerbi and Bastoni formed the back three. Calhanoglu and Sucic anchored the midfield ahead of them. Darmian, operating as a right wing-back in Inter’s familiar 3-5-1-1, was tasked with creating from wide and supporting Esposito, who led the attack with Diouf and Frattesi behind him. Lautaro Martinez, Inter’s captain and leading scorer, was absent through a leg injury, and that absence — however well Chivu tried to compensate for it — left a visible gap at the top of the Nerazzurri’s attack that Como were able to exploit in moments where defensive compactness mattered most.
The first half was tense and disciplined on both sides. Fàbregas set Como up in their 4-2-3-1 with Nico Paz as the focal point in attack, Caqueret and Vojvoda wide, and the double pivot of Perrone and Sergi Roberto providing defensive cover while also looking to feed the ball into Paz’s feet in dangerous spaces. The Argentine, who had scored five goals from outside the box across all competitions this season and brought a creative unpredictability that Inter’s defenders would have been briefed about extensively, was sharper than he had been in some recent outings and created two moments in the first period where Inter’s defensive structure briefly opened. Neither led to a shot on target, but they served notice of his threat.
Inter’s best opportunity of the first half came through Calhanoglu, who tried to pick the lock from distance in the 38th minute with a driven effort that Jean Butez gathered at the second attempt. The Belgian goalkeeper — who had been Como’s hero against Napoli in the quarter-final, saving the decisive penalty in a 7-6 shootout drama — was composed and commanding throughout the evening, commanding his area with the certainty of a goalkeeper who had grown into the challenge of keeping a high-flying Serie A side in games that, a year ago, would have felt far beyond Como’s reach.
The second half shifted slightly in Inter’s direction, and the most significant moment of the entire match came in the 58th minute when Matteo Darmian, who had been introduced in an attacking wing-back role and was driving forward at every opportunity, hit the post with a low, angled drive from the right side of the penalty area. The ball came back off the upright, was scrambled clear, and Como survived. Had that gone in, the tie would have looked very different heading to San Siro in April. Instead, it stayed goalless, and the equalising pressure it would have forced on Como never materialised.
Chivu made his changes in an attempt to inject fresh quality — Dumfries replaced Darmian at 58 minutes, Zielinski came on for Calhanoglu at the same time, and Mkhitaryan entered late for Frattesi in the 86th minute. Fàbregas responded to each Inter substitution with his own adjustments. Diao replaced Sergi Roberto in the 70th minute, Van der Brempt and Moreno came on for Vojvoda and Valle in the 79th, and the final two changes — Baturina for Caqueret and Douvikas for Paz in the 86th minute — gave Como a more direct attacking option in the closing stages as they looked to nick a goal that would have been an enormous advantage for the second leg.
Marcus Thuram, who had come on for Inter late in the match, was flagged offside on one occasion when he thought he had put the ball in the net — the flag was up quickly and there was no real doubt about the call — and that was, in truth, the closest either side came to breaking the deadlock in the final ten minutes. The match petered out without the drama that both sets of supporters had hoped for in the closing moments, but the 0-0 scoreline carried its own narrative meaning regardless. Como had kept Inter Milan out for 90 minutes. They had been competitive, intelligent, disciplined and occasionally threatening against a team that had beaten them 4-0 just three months earlier. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, quite a lot.
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The second leg at San Siro on April 22 will decide which club goes to Rome. Inter, who have won the Coppa Italia seven times and carry the weight of an institution that expects to compete in finals, will be heavy favourites once again on their own turf. They have won seven of their last eight away games in all competitions, keeping clean sheets in the majority of those victories, which tells you something about how difficult they are to score against when fully organised on the road. The fact that Como kept a clean sheet themselves in the first leg means Inter will need to score at San Siro — they cannot simply sit back and manage the tie as they might if they were carrying a 1-0 or 2-0 lead.
For Como, the 0-0 result is genuinely positive. They go to San Siro knowing that one goal could put them in the final if Inter do not score, and that the pressure on the home side — expected to win, carrying the demands of a supporter base that sees European trophies as the minimum acceptable outcome — will be just as real as any pressure on Fàbregas’s players. The story of Como’s Coppa Italia run this season — beating Südtirol, Sassuolo, Fiorentina, and then Napoli on penalties before holding Inter at the Sinigaglia — is one of the most compelling narratives in Italian football this season, and the official Coppa Italia coverage on the Lega Serie A website has followed every moment of it.
Fàbregas has transformed Como into something genuinely special in Italian football, and Tuesday night in front of a sold-out Sinigaglia was another chapter in a story that shows no sign of reaching its climax just yet. Whether they make it to Rome in May will be decided at San Siro in April, but the first leg gave them every reason to believe they can.
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