Before filming Enter the Dragon in Rome, Bruce Lee, the legendary martial artist, went on The Pierre Berton show.
He told the audience about a lesson one of his masters taught him, a recommendation to “be formless, shapeless, like water”. Holding Berton’s attention with unblinking charisma, Lee said: “If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Como are water. Not because they play by a famous lake and Adidas incorporated rippling aqua into this season’s shirt design. But because of how Cesc Fabregas has got the team playing.
After beating Juventus back-to-back for the first time since 1952, he praised his players for their reading of the game at the Allianz Stadium. They knew when to press and who to press, when to stand off Juventus and which of their opponents they should give time on the ball, when to go direct and speed the game up and when to keep the ball and slow it down.
What made this all the more impressive to Fabregas was the turnaround between Como’s game against Milan at San Siro on Wednesday and their trip to Turin. There had been next to no time between recovery and travel. Time for video and little else. And yet Como were in a flow state.
Fabregas noticed his players looking to him less and less for instruction. This made him proud. It showed how far Como have come since they made their return to Serie A away to Juventus 18 months ago. It meant the players had absorbed his way of thinking. They see what Fabregas sees from the bench, almost as one, almost as clear as water.
After taking a point at San Siro, where Milan hadn’t, until this weekend, lost since the opening day of the season, Fabregas wanted another good performance. He strived for continuity. The best teams are able to back it up. They can do it every three days and, even though Como are only 18 months out of Serie B, that’s what he wants from them.
A week earlier, Fabregas cut a disappointed figure. Days after knocking Napoli out of the Coppa Italia to reach the competition’s semi-finals for the first time in 40 years, Como lost to Fiorentina. He didn’t want the same to happen again this weekend, and the players rose to the challenge.
While Mergim Vojvoda’s opener was a touch fortunate, taking a deflection off Juventus’ Fabio Miretti, it was still Vojvoda. The Kosovan has not been one of Como’s glamour signings. But as with Lucas Da Cunha, the captain and vice-captain, he has been re-evaluated, reinvented and reinvigorated by Fabregas’ coaching.
Fabregas with Da Cunha in December (Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
Killing the game with a second goal was another sign of Como’s burgeoning maturity. Every Juventus corner was considered a chance for Como to score. The purpose and determination they showed in these situations were rewarded, as Sergi Roberto came on and immediately launched a break. Maximo Perrone played through his skipper, Da Cunha, and as the Juventus players converged on him, they left Maxence Caqueret all alone at the far post.
When the ball found its way across the box to him, a stunned silence descended on the Allianz Stadium. The home fans knew what was coming. It was a beautifully executed goal. Caqueret, like five other members of the starting XI, joined in a January transfer window.
Quiet by their standards last month, Como have demonstrated throughout their rise it is a myth no value can be found in the winter market. The goalkeeper Jean Butez, who barely had a save to make on Saturday, cost €2.1m (£1.8m, $2.5m), right-back Ivan Smolcic was acquired for €1.5m, Vojvoda for €2m and Da Cunha for €750k.
On the one hand, the shoestring core has been overlooked at a time when Como have been Serie A’s biggest net spenders. On the other hand, opinions of them as a small club have not changed despite the hundreds of millions of investment and the signing of players from Barcelona and Real Madrid.
After winning in Turin for the first time in 75 years, a reporter put it to Fabregas that Como have an advantage over the other teams vying to qualify for the Champions League. That advantage is leggerezza; the lightness that comes with being unburdened by expectation.
Fabregas was politely incredulous. “Do you really think we don’t want to win every game?” He turned to Caqueret beside him. Hadn’t he played for Lyon, where he was expected, if not to challenge for the title, then to finish top four and play in Europe?
“I understand the question, but the players know pressure,” Fabregas said. “From the outside, you might have the perception it isn’t important for us to win. But for us, it’s very important that we do. We’ve got our identity and have to be patient with a few things. But our objective is to win and to play with a lot of pressure. Zero leggerezza. In football, it doesn’t exist.”
As was the case with Roberto De Zerbi when he was in Serie A, people have tried to make Fabregas out to be something he’s not: a fundamentalist, a Pep disciple, a tiki-taka advocate. But Fabregas, like Como, is water. Spanish football, Italian football, English football, German football. It’s all football to him. You adapt to circumstance, to opponents, to your players. He has drawn on all of his influences: Guardiola and Arsene Wenger, but also Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte.
In Serie B, he could not play like he does now. In Serie A, what works against Milan might not work against Juventus. The same goes for Lecce and Verona. They all present different challenges. You pour yourself into the analysis and decide on what you need to become in order to win. Be water. Be Como.
The win moved them within a point of Juventus. It was a weekend in which the race for Champions League qualification got even more interesting. Juventus weren’t the only team to fall. Napoli lost in controversial circumstances in Bergamo, too.
Still without Romelu Lukaku and Kevin De Bruyne, who some were expecting back by now, Conte is having to forego even Scott McTominay, the one player who has resisted an unprecedented injury crisis in Fuorigrotta.
Thinking they were 2-0 up against Atalanta, Conte was incredulous when the referee ruled out Miguel Gutierrez’s goal for a non-existent foul by Rasmus Hojlund on Isak Hien. “Where is it? Where? Where? Where?” Napoli sporting director Giovanni Manna wondered on DAZN.
“From the stands, I thought the ball had gone out of play. (It hadn’t). Look! What’s he doing? What’s he doing? It’s absurd. It’s embarrassing. What is the VAR doing? Why doesn’t he call for a review? We’re going for Champions League qualification and they rule it out. Maybe we would have gone 2-0 up and still lost, but this isn’t football. I’m speechless. It’s a disgrace.”
If you haven’t already guessed, Atalanta mounted a comeback and won 2-1. They joined Como in the queue behind Napoli and Juventus, their breath hot on nervous necks.
“No one believed in us,” Atalanta coach Raffaele Palladino claimed to Sky. “When I took over (in November), we were 13th. Now we’re right up there.” Winning six of their last seven home games, including the 3-0 humbling of Juventus in the Coppa Italia quarter-finals, has undoubtedly played a role. It’s why Atalanta still conserve some hope of turning around their Champions League play-off with Borussia Dortmund this week.
Their old coach Gian Piero Gasperini revealed a few days ago that it was a sacrifice on his part to leave Champions League football for Roma. Their owners, the Friedkins, and their consigliere Claudio Ranieri apparently did not demand a top-four finish from Gasperini in his first year in the capital. They recognised this could be a season of transition.
And yet Gasperini expects Champions League qualification of himself. “It’s a battle. There are lots of teams in and around one another. Roma haven’t been in the Champions League for a long time (seven years) and we’re having a go at making it happen now.”
Donyell Malen’s arrival from Aston Villa has made Gasperini visibly optimistic. His goals against Napoli a week ago were his third and fourth in five appearances. Only Gabriel Batistuta and Stephan El Shaarawy have made more prolific starts to their Roma careers.
Gasperini has been boosted by the arrival of Malen from Villa (Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)
Sunday’s 3-0 win over Cremonese, clinched via a couple of set pieces and a strike from the homegrown Niccolo Pisilli, meant Roma equalled Napoli on 50 points. The momentum is with them. They may even catch Milan, who lost for the first time since the opening day of the season.
As was the case in August when Cremonese caused an upset at San Siro, few anticipated Parma’s first win there in 12 years. Carlos Cuesta, the youngest coach in the league, has established a reputation this season for being the Spanish Max Allegri. Wins have often come ‘by a nose’. That was true in stoppage time of the Derby dell’Emilia against Bologna a fortnight ago, and so it was on Sunday when another late victory, Parma’s third-in-a-row, opened a gap between them and the drop zone that effectively mirrors the difference between Milan and league leaders Inter at the top.
The title race looks over. No one in the top six has won back-to-back games apart from Inter, who are showing the consistency of champions. Set pieces broke Lecce on Saturday. No one — not even Arsenal — have scored as many goals (15) from these situations in Europe’s top five leagues. Federico Dimarco’s deliveries continue to bust open uncrackable defences. It’s now five games in-a-row he has laid on an assist, a feat matched by the likes of Antonio Cassano in the past.
Ten points clear at the top, even the injury Lautaro Martinez suffered in the Arctic Circle isn’t dampening expectations of a 21st title. Worn out by flights north to Norway, then south to Puglia, Inter should still be able to reverse their first-leg defeat to Bodo Glimt.
“The tie’s still open,” Cristian Chivu told DAZN. “We created in Glimt, hitting the woodwork a couple of times, only to then suffer lapses of concentration on some quick transitions. We’ll go for it.”
Three Serie A sides were eliminated this time last year. Three could be knocked out again. If the Italian teams were to all go out of the Champions League this week, water in a cup would not become the cup. It would runneth dry instead.