Como beat Maradona by playing a second half of pure defense… like Max. This is how the Catalan coach became pragmatic and obtained the maximum result.
Cesc Fabregas got smart and Como became great. The victory against Maradona at Napoli, a sumptuous performance by the Como team, a real warning to the championship behind Inter who are racing, will go down in the small history of Serie A as the one in which the Catalan coach changed his skin, he took on the role of the “resultist” and beat Max Allegri, the king of anti-gamers, giving him back the same coin.
An unexpected reversal but which must sound like a compliment for Fabregas. his Como plays much better than Napoli, has a certified identity and construction lines and that the additions of a pharaonic market will improve quickly to also withstand the challenge of the first Champions League in the club’s history, but to win every now and then you also need a bit of healthy pragmatism. Cesc, at Maradona, was able to show both versions of himself.
Keeping the team’s center of gravity at 39.54 meters as Como did in the second half, leaving the field (Napoli’s 60.77 meters) and the ball (39% versus 61% possession from minute 60 onwards) to secure the advantage is, for the mischievous, a modern version of the catenaccio. In reality it was a matter of adapting to the flow of a match in which the opponent was progressively drawing everything possible from the bench (De Bruyne and Alisson Santos first, Neres and Lucca then) to deploy the team’s offensive potential.
Fabregas, who theorized that he would never insert an extra defender to defend an advantage because it would have lowered the team, giving space and courage to the opponent, did so against Napoli to the point of closing with an unprecedented 5-4-1 which was very poor Fabregassian and a lot they cheer up. Or Italian, given that many like to label us as defenseists and that’s it.
Pragmatism, therefore. Which is the opposite of the somewhat stupid rigidity not of Fabregas, who has already demonstrated that he knows how to make his Como recite various scripts, but of the anti-cheerers. Who, to explain an ultimately deserved victory by the guests, resorted to the usual standard scheme steeped in prejudice according to which one had given football lessons (Como) and the other had defended itself to the bitter end with some sporadic restarts (Napoli).
This was not the case and this is also why Como’s sack of Maradona takes on greater value. Allegri is working on a squad inherited from Conte, not strengthened by a necessarily zero-balance transfer marketwho would need more quality especially at the back but which allows him to model the containment phase and the boarding phase within the same match. It happened at Marassi with Genoa, winning. Zero points were achieved against Napoli but in football the opponent is not a meaningless detail and Fabregas’ Como, “the results maker”, aspires to quickly become a great team that plays to win and not just to be applauded by football aesthetes.
