Tejaswi Shrivastava

🚨 Arsene Wenger on why the talk about Cesc Fabregas next job misses what he’s doing at Como: “Someone showed me the score at 8–1 and asked, ‘How long before a big club comes for Cesc?’ “I said, ‘How long have you been watching?’ “He said, ‘I’ve only just seen the score.’ “I said, ‘Then you’ve got eight reasons to put the game on.’ “When Cesc was young at Arsenal, he was very good at seeing what could happen after the pass he was about to play. The difficult part, at that age, is persuading a man who’s played five hundred games that you can see something he hasn’t seen yet. “I remember asking him about a pass he’d played into a teammate with a man right behind him. I said, ‘What did you expect him to do with that?’ “He told me, ‘Give it back. His man had followed him, so I could run into the space.’ “I said, ‘Did he know you were going to run there?’ “He said, ‘He will next time.’ “I liked that answer. The first time, your teammate can think you’ve given him a bad ball. The second time, he can give it back to you without even looking. There’s a lot of work between those two passes. “That’s what I wanted to see when Como were three up at half-time. Lens made changes. The crowd had fifteen minutes to tell themselves the next goal could make it a game again. Then the second half starts, Nico Paz gets the ball and Lucas Da Cunha goes straight back to making the run he believes Nico will see. Within two minutes, it’s four. “People will remember the eight. I’ll remember how quickly they got the fourth. I’ve been in enough dressing rooms to know how tempting it is, at 3–0, to congratulate everybody on a very good half and spend the next one trying to preserve it. Como came out and picked up the conversation they’d been having with the ball. “The man who showed me the score came back to it. He said, ‘But surely Cesc is ready for a bigger job now?’ “I said, ‘Of course he is. Look how much bigger the job at Como has become since he took it.’ “Think of a supporter who has spent years going to the same ground. For a long time, if he wanted to explain what his club meant to him, he had to tell you about going with his father, or where they used to stand, or the player he loved whom you’d probably never heard of. He knew exactly why it mattered. He couldn’t always expect you to. “Now he can ring the same people who used to ask him, ‘How did Como get on?’ out of politeness. Before he can say a word, they’re asking him, ‘What on earth have you got going on down there?’ “I imagine he’s been waiting quite a long time to have that conversation. I’d let him finish it before asking where his manager should go next.”

I know a lot of the discourse tonight will be about United, but man, let’s just take a good while to appreciate Como. What a team. What a project. And what a manager Cesc Fabregas is. Levels of this. A masterclass in how to build a squad and a project from the ground up.