Cesc Fàbregas Praises Arsenal’s Patience and Long-Term Vision
Cesc Fàbregas knows exactly what a restless club looks like. Arsenal, he insists, are no longer one of them.
Back at the Emirates Stadium, where he once dictated games in red and white, the former captain paused to praise something supporters rarely sing about: patience.
Fàbregas hails Arsenal’s long game
The Spaniard, who racked up 303 appearances for the Gunners, highlighted how the Arsenal board refused to blink during the early turbulence of Mikel Arteta’s reign and instead doubled down on a long-term vision.
“Congratulations to the club in general starting from seven, eight years ago when they first started with this project,” he said after the match in north London. “Because what you see in football every day, what Arsenal did, especially in the difficult moments, it doesn’t exist.”
He went back over the painful steps of the rebuild. Mid-table finishes. The near-miss with the Champions League. The rival surge from across north London.
“I told Edu, I told Andrea [Berta] when I came last year to a Champions League game, I said congratulations to the whole club for the patience, for sticking together, for sticking to the plan when for three years in a row, correct me if I’m wrong, finished eighth, eighth, eighth, fourth year nearly Champions League, it was a big disappointment, Tottenham came, you finish fifth,” he recalled.
The key part, for Fàbregas, came next.
“But you keep going because you have a plan, because you have an objective, because you have progression, you keep going forward.”
That, in his eyes, is where Arsenal have separated themselves from the chaos that rules so many other clubs.
A swipe at football’s quick-fix culture
Fàbregas did not hide his frustration with the modern cycle of panic and sackings that can rip up a project before it has a chance to breathe.
“We lack this in football today,” he said. “You lose three games, change the coach, he was playing one style, now you play another, at the end of the day I don’t believe in this a lot.”
The message was blunt: constant change kills continuity. Arsenal, he argued, chose a different route, and the stability around Arteta has allowed a clear identity to grow.
He sees that model as something worth copying.
Como’s coach taking notes from Arsenal
Now head coach at Como, Fàbregas is trying to build his own version of that culture, even if the scale is different.
“I’m very lucky I’m in a project, of course with much lower level, the history, everything, but we’re trying to look at the stability Arsenal had, the values, the culture that they are bringing,” he explained.
He credited Arteta directly.
“I think Mikel has done a tremendous job. So I can only wish them the best, really. Because most of the group, these guys now you talk to them, I don’t know… they’re good guys, they want to play good football, they are respectful, you can see how they stick to the plan all the time. Really, I’m super happy to come back here and smell this feeling.”
For Fàbregas, it was not just nostalgia. It was validation of a way of working he is now trying to embed in Italy.
Arsenal’s next tests – and Como’s big step
The champions’ patience will be tested on the pitch again soon enough. Arsenal meet Manchester City in the Community Shield in Cardiff on Sunday, 16 August, a sharp early marker before they begin their Premier League title defence against newly promoted Coventry City six days later.
On that same Sunday, Fàbregas will be busy on the touchline. Como are set for a double-header of friendlies against Liverpool, the first behind closed doors, the second in front of supporters.
Then comes the real measure of his own project: a Serie A season opener against Udinese the following Saturday.
Arsenal have shown what happens when a club refuses to flinch. Now the question is whether Fàbregas can turn that lesson into a lasting story of his own on Lake Como.
