Cesc Fabregas named Serie A Coach of the Year for 2025-26

Cesc Fabregas, the man who once threaded passes through Premier League defenses like they were made of tissue paper, has added a new line to his already absurd CV. The former Arsenal, Barcelona, and Chelsea midfielder was named Serie A Coach of the Year for the 2025-26 season at the Gran Galà del Calcio AIC ceremony held at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala on September 2.

The award recognizes what might be one of the most remarkable coaching stories in recent Italian football history. Under Fabregas, Como 1907 finished fourth in Serie A, securing the club’s first ever qualification for the UEFA Champions League.

From promotion to Europe’s top table

The numbers tell a story that borders on the absurd. Como finished 10th in Serie A during the 2024-25 season, a respectable result for a club that had only returned to the top flight in May 2024. One season later, they climbed to fourth, a 27-point improvement that left the rest of Italian football scrambling for explanations.

Fabregas, who retired from playing with Como in the summer of 2023 before transitioning into coaching, had been building something since his days as interim manager during the club’s promotion campaign. The patience of Como’s ownership, headlined by Indonesian billionaire Robert Budi Hartono, appears to have paid off in a way that even the most optimistic projections wouldn’t have predicted.

Fabregas became the first foreign coach to win the AIC Coach of the Year award in its modern form. He had already won the Bearzot Award back in March 2026, another first for a non-Italian manager, signaling that the Italian football establishment had fully bought in well before the season concluded.

Not a one-man show

Como’s rise wasn’t solely about tactics scribbled on a whiteboard. The club’s players earned their own recognition at the ceremony. Nico Paz, the young Argentine midfielder, took home the AIC rising star award and was named to the Serie A Team of the Year.

Federico Dimarco of Inter Milan won the league’s overall MVP award. Fabregas also picked up the Coach of the Month award for March.

The coaching career so far

Fabregas hung up his boots after joining Como in Italy’s lower divisions. He stepped into an interim coaching role that became permanent, guiding the club through promotion in May 2024 and then into the upper reaches of Serie A. The trajectory from Serie B promotion to Champions League football in roughly two years is the kind of arc that football documentaries are built around.

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