Como are not supposed to be here. This is the first Champions League campaign in the club's history, a team from the lake coached by Cesc Fàbregas, and on Wednesday night in northern France they played like they owned the place. Nine goals. Away from home. Lens 1, Como 9 — a scoreline you have to read twice.
The record books put it in rare air. Only one team had ever scored nine goals in a Champions League match before: Bayern Munich, in their 9-2 win over Dinamo Zagreb in September 2024, and Bayern did it at home. Nobody had scored nine in an away match in the European Cup since Feyenoord won 9-0 at Olympiakos in 1971. Como just did it in the fourth game of their debut campaign, and it stands as the biggest win an Italian club has ever recorded in this competition.
It was 1-0 inside seven minutes. A short corner ended with Luis Milla crossing, Máximo Perrone knocking the ball down and Tasos Douvikas prodding it home at full stretch. Lens briefly thought they had a way back — a penalty awarded on 16 minutes was wiped out after a VAR review — and then the floor gave way. On 32 minutes Como travelled from their own goalkeeper to the far post in one flowing move: Nico Paz floated it deep, Álex Valle volleyed it back across goal, and Douvikas tapped in his second.
Eight minutes later Paz scored the third himself, a ferocious left-foot strike into the roof of the net from a tight angle, put through by Douvikas. And then he didn't celebrate. Paz jogged to the bench and held up a shirt bearing the face of Jesús de Miguel, the Tenerife forward who died on Tuesday after a collision during a LaLiga 2 match. Paz was born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and came through Tenerife's academy, the club his father played for. On a night that became about numbers, that was the moment that mattered most, and he let it speak for itself.
If Lens hoped half-time would slow it down, Lucas Da Cunha ended that thought inside a minute of the restart, finishing a give-and-go with Paz into the far corner. Marc-Oliver Kempf headed in a fifth from Milla's delivery on 53 minutes. Four minutes later Paz split the hosts from midfield and Douvikas ran onto it, drew the goalkeeper and swept home his hat-trick.
That makes six Champions League goals in four appearances for Douvikas — he has scored in every one of them — and it moved him level with Nicolò Tresoldi at the top of this season's scoring chart in the competition. Paz, who finished with a goal and two assists, now has three goals and five assists in four European games of his own.
It still wasn't finished. Mattia Liberali, on as a substitute, drove in the seventh at the near post on 62 minutes. Ruben Aguilar volleyed in Lens's only goal three minutes later, a fine strike that changed nothing. Martin Baturina slalomed through for the eighth on 69 minutes. And in stoppage time came the ninth, the one the bench will remember longest: Matteo Papaccioli, 18 years old, sent on for Douvikas for his professional debut, sprang the offside trap on Liberali's pass. The flag delayed his celebration; the VAR check gave it back to him, and he ran straight to Fàbregas.
Como did all of this with five players missing, Moise Kean and Trevoh Chalobah among them, in what was also their first-ever away win in Europe. Four games into their first Champions League campaign, Fàbregas's side sit fourth in the league-phase table on nine points, with 13 goals scored across their last two European matches. Next up in Europe, AEK Athens come to the lake on November 24. They will not be looking forward to it.
Every goal from the Bollaert-Delelis rout lives on the match's Game Center page.
