Liberali, €6 Million, and the File Nobody Opened

4 September 2026. On the evening of Como's away win at Genoa's Luigi Ferraris, Matteo Liberali came on for just a few minutes. That was his last appearance. Then came three straight benches against Parma, Frosinone and Roma, without a single minute. In the press box the colleague beside me tossed out the easy question: “So is the kid the new Baturina, or the new Kuhn?” I reached for paper before I reached for an answer. The fee, the contract length, the add-ons, the sell-on clause, the medical file — none of it was within reach.

This piece begins exactly there. For years I have worked to a rule: documents first, interviews second. A source once handed me a spreadsheet and told me, “Do not trust this.” That lesson is doing the work here, because the Liberali story is still an unfinished file.

To understand the case you have to understand the setup. Cesc Fabregas's football is possession-based, organised build-up, and in the club's own language it takes time to settle into that system. I have tracked Serie A match by match for a long while, and under the same coach two opposite precedents sit side by side. In June 2026 Como spent €25 million on Martin Baturina from Dinamo Zagreb — €18 million guaranteed, the remaining €7 million contingent. It took him roughly five months to absorb Fabregas's instructions; after that he became one of Serie A's leading players. The reverse image is Kuhn: he could not get inside the system, was sold to Borussia Mönchengladbach last summer, and that sale is what freed the squad space for Liberali.

Liberali was born in 2026, came through the AC Milan academy, and spent one Serie B season at Catanzaro. In mid-July 2026 Como paid €6 million to bring him in. The club says three benches are “a normal part of the process”; Fabregas says the player is on excellent terms with Como and was not signed because he is Italian. Those statements are the only clearly attributed material in the reporting. Everything else — the fees, the ages, the future — rests on information whose written source appears nowhere. Como today are a consolidating mid-table side in Serie A, neither a relegation fighter nor a title contender. That is precisely the vaguest place for a young player to stand.

The real accounting starts here. €6 million against €25 million: read together, the two numbers reveal a ladder — a high price for proven youth, a low price for unproven youth. Como's recruitment is a risk-tiered staircase, where the price is set not by on-pitch performance but by the probability of surviving the system. And leaving €7 million of Baturina's €25 million contingent means 28 percent of the payment is tied to performance. A club that knows its system is hard to learn will logically tie money to performance; here the add-on is not haggling, it is insurance.

But what Liberali's file does not contain says more than what it does. How long is the contract? What is the weekly wage? What are the add-ons? Is there a sell-on clause? No answers. The age record has gaps too: the same reporting calls him a 19-year-old while giving his birth year as 2026; Baturina is called 23 with a birth year of 2026. Depending on the reference date, those figures do not reconcile. These discrepancies are not trivial — they show that the very information on which we are debating “new Kuhn or new Baturina” has never been verified.

In football a teenager's price is set in three rooms — the pitch, the medical room and the accounts. The pitch record here is four matches: one cameo, three benches. Nobody has seen the medical file. The accounts are closed. — Root: The Doctor. The quietest room always has the most to say.

Kuhn's sale, to be fair, is not a failure story; it is part of the model. Selling an adapter who failed and replacing him with a cheaper project — that is Como's asset rotation, and it is what shrinks the tail risk. The missing fee was never missing; it was renamed into add-ons, sometimes into a sell-on. The footnotes of the contract are the real story, and in this case nobody printed the footnotes.

Como's positioning is worth noting too. A teenager from Catanzaro, a Champions League-tested young talent from the Balkans, a failed adapter shipped to the Bundesliga — that three-way flow is the model: stepping-stone plus resale. A January loan is being kept openly on the table. The club says there is nothing to worry about; that position shields both paths — either the boy plays, or he goes on loan to Serie B. This soft language of expectation management is really indecision, and indecision is the most expensive thing you can offer a young player.

The least discussed risk is not the player's, though. It belongs to the model. Como's value-creation factory stands on one coach's system; if Fabregas leaves, system-dependent players stall halfway. That concentrated dependence never shows up on paper — only in the shape of the decisions.

This is where the popular argument turns the wrong way. Some say it is about talent, others say it is about the coach's system. Both are answers to the wrong question, because the whole binary rests on four matches of non-appearance — not a sample at all. What stands out in the reporting is that its tone is protective rather than critical. Club and coach are both lowering expectations, the classic device for preventing a “flop” label — and, at the same time, for protecting the market value of a young asset.

There is another blind spot almost nobody sees. If Baturina stays one of Serie A's leading players, he becomes the prime target to be poached. On that day Liberali's value will be set not by his own development but as a hedge — Como will effectively be waiting for a future sale, not for football. That is why the club's real question is never written in a player's name; it is written in the balance sheet.

So the question is not “Baturina or Kuhn.” The question is: who approved this €6 million fee, on which document, and what is written in that teenager's medical file? The winter window is closing in; if this run of benches crosses Baturina's five-month line, the label will set hard. Before then, if someone asks to see the papers, at least one answer will be found.