Serie A Football Club

When asked whether she expected the rise to Serie A Women to come this quickly, Heather O’Reilly does not pause for long.

“To be honest, yes, because I am a determined person and I surround myself with determined people.”

O’Reilly has spent a career around winning environments. As a player, she won three Olympic gold medals and a World Cup with the United States, represented clubs including Arsenal, and was recently inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame. At Como 1907, her role is different now, but the instinct remains the same. Build well. Work with good people. Set high standards. Then try to win.

That is what Como 1907 Women have done. After winning Serie B, the team secured promotion to Serie A Women following a dominant season under coach Selena Mazzantini. They won the title with three matches to spare, finishing with the best attack and the best defense in the league.

It was an impressive season, but not one that happened by chance. Last summer, after the Club acquired the sporting title of Chievo Women to participate in Serie B, the outside expectation was simple. Stay in the league. Build slowly. Survive first. Heather saw it differently.

“Of course, surviving is fundamental, but surviving isn’t enough for me; I want to win.”

The squad was built with that same mindset. New players arrived in the summer, including captain Vero Boquete, with the project shaped as much around people as football. The human side mattered. The character of the group mattered. That same environment later helped convince Valentina Giacinti to join during the winter transfer window.

“Serie B is not easy at all; the championship was complicated from several points of view. However, Coach Mazzantini and the staff managed to stimulate the group in the best possible way, physically, mentally, and emotionally. During the season, when we encountered obstacles, we got back up quickly; this is an important quality to become a great team.”

That ability to respond became one of the team’s defining traits. Serie B was not straightforward, but Como looked aligned early. The group understood the goal, but also the way they wanted to reach it. Winning is never guaranteed. Winning while building an identity takes more than talent.

For Como 1907, the achievement carries a wider meaning. Both first teams will now play in the top division, a milestone reached for the first time in the Club’s history.

“Achieving this goal is the reward for two years of hard work by every person working in the women’s sector. It wasn’t easy and required great focus and sacrifice, successfully bringing together different ways of working from various cultures and turning this process into a great strength.”

The squad reflected that work across the pitch. Fabiana Fierro, Emma Guidi, and Emma Mustafic helped give the team security in goal, supported by a defense made up of Francesca Pittaccio, Elena Pisani, Federica Veritti, Federica Rizza, Giulia Trevisan, Ludovica Falloni, and Cecilie Sandvej. Further forward, Vero Boquete brought creativity, Louise Eriksen, Dominika Conc, and Elena Nichele added control and substance, Sofia Colombo gave the team energy, and Rossella Sardu offered leadership.

In attack, Giusy Moraca brought technical quality, Elisa Del Estal scored ten goals, Martina Gelmetti added flair, and Valentina Giacinti and Roberta Picchi made decisive contributions. Claudia Zorzetto and Kristin Carrer, both unfortunate with injuries, remained close to the group and continued to support the team throughout the season.

There were also moments that connected the team more closely to the wider Club and the city. Two matches at the Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia gave the players a different kind of stage. For Heather, those occasions carried both emotional and professional importance.

“Every time we play at the Sinigaglia, it’s fantastic. It makes us feel proud to be part of this Club overlooking the Lake, and obviously, it’s a setting that helps a lot from a professional point of view. The goal is to try to have as many opportunities as possible in the future to play at the Sinigaglia, representing the Club and the Como community in the most honorable way possible.”

Now, with the 2025/26 season coming to a close, attention turns to what comes next. Como 1907 Women will play in Serie A Women, but the approach does not change. For Heather, the focus remains on growth, standards, and creating an environment where players can improve.

“Now the goal is to continue improving; as long as we focus on improvement and development instead of results, the sky will be the limit for us. We want to become one of the reference teams in Italy, and we want to do it by continuing to be a development destination for players, a Club where they can reach their maximum potential.”

That idea sits at the center of the project. Results matter, but the work is also about something more durable. Como wants to build a team that competes, develops players, represents the community, and contributes to the growth of women’s football in Italy.

“We hope our work over the last two years inspires others in Italy to invest their resources, people, and infrastructure to support the quality of players present in Italy. This will improve the product and the experience of women’s football for everyone. Italy has a great chance for a major leap in the women’s football sector, but to do so will require great work in several aspects; we are ready to do our part.”

Heather O’Reilly has brought energy, ambition, and high standards to Como 1907 Women. This season, those qualities became visible in a team that reached its target quickly, but not accidentally. The promotion is a result. The work behind it is the story.

For most photographers, football moves too fast. The sprint, the tackle, the goal, the celebration, the instant edit, the upload, the algorithm. Everything is designed to happen now. Miles Myerscough Harris has built a career by doing almost the opposite.

Through Expired Film Club, his online world of vintage cameras, old rolls of film and sport seen through a softer grain, Miles has become one of the most distinctive image makers working in football today. His photos feel less like documentation and more like memory. Players blur at the edge of the frame. Floodlights glow. Crowds become texture. A goal celebration looks like something you half remember from childhood, even if it happened last week.

“I’m as surprised as anybody, honestly,” he says. “I’m very lucky. Completely living the dream. I love what I do so much and it never gets old, turning up to these amazing stadiums and shooting it.”

Like many good modern stories, it began by accident. Before Expired Film Club, Miles worked in the music industry, mostly across digital, photography, videography and audio. Then lockdown arrived in the UK, live music stopped, and he found himself with time. He bought an old film camera on Facebook Marketplace in Oxfordshire and started experimenting again with a medium he had not properly touched since school.

“I just fell completely in love with shooting film basically, and using these old cameras and old rolls of film,” he says. “I started posting my journey back into film photography.”

The name came naturally. He liked expired film, the strange suspense of it, the fact that no roll could promise exactly what it would give back. Then one TikTok changed everything. On the coast in the south of England, he asked his wife to film him loading an expired roll into an old camera. He posted it as a point of view video. Overnight, it reached millions.

At first, he repeated the format wherever he could, in parks, woods and quiet corners while stadiums were still closed. Then sport returned, and with it came the place where his style made complete sense. Football, seen on film, suddenly looked less like content and more like cinema.

The first major shift came through COPA90, who sent him and his brother to shoot Fulham against Nottingham Forest from the stands. Fulham reposted the work, a dialogue opened, and by November 2023 he was pitch side at Craven Cottage for Fulham against Wolves. “That was the first time I was a proper pitch side accredited photographer for a game,” he says. “I’ll never forget it.”

The video from that match exploded. Clubs noticed. Other sports noticed. The New York Yankees got in touch. Six Nations rugby followed. Then came the FA Cup quarter final between Manchester United and Liverpool, where Amad scored deep in extra time and Miles, a United fan, found himself photographing and losing his mind at the same time. Manchester United shared the video. Another door opened.

Como, though, offered something different. When Miles finally arrived at Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia, after an earlier attempt was interrupted by that same United match, it was his first time in the city. The setting immediately made sense to him.

“Como was a dream to shoot because it’s so gorgeous,” he says. “Everywhere I looked, basically, there was cool stuff to photograph.”

His approach is not to compete with the digital photographers beside him, who are sending images out in real time. By the time his film comes back from the lab, the obvious pictures have already been seen. So he looks elsewhere. A different frame. A quieter emotion. A shape in the crowd. A player in the seconds after the moment everyone else captured.

“I try to treat it in my head as making each frame like a cinematic story of the place,” he says. “I like to pick out other little details of games that people might not see in the news stories or on social media.”

At Como, that meant the football, but also the lake, the streets, the feeling around the stadium, the way matchday sits inside the city rather than outside it. It meant the intimacy of the ground, the ultras behind the goal, the flags, the closeness, the late winning goal from Assane Diao that sent him running past Miles and his 1980 Canon.

“One of those photos of him celebrating is one of my favourites I’ve ever taken,” he says.

Away from the pitch, he and his wife explored the city and the lake by car, stopping for views, coffee and the kind of alfresco moments that make Italy feel naturally cinematic. The night of the match, they found a late table, sat outside by heaters, ordered pizza and red wine, and let the evening slow down.

That sense of slowness is the point. In a sports culture obsessed with speed, Miles works with delay. After a match, he may leave with 15 to 20 rolls of film. They go back to Analogue Wonderland, his local lab, where they are developed, scanned and sent back. Only then does he see what he has.

“There’s a certain beauty in those imperfections,” he says. “Film just looks like film anyway, so there’s not a lot I need to do.”

His garage is now full of negatives. Some will become prints. Some will go into a photo book. Some may simply stay as evidence of a life spent moving through stadiums, cities and small private moments with a camera in hand.

For all the reach, the viral clips and the access, Miles still talks about the work like someone who cannot quite believe he gets to do it. He wants to shoot sports in Japan. He wants to photograph Manchester United winning the Champions League or England winning the World Cup. But mostly, he wants to keep going.

“Sometimes I’m shooting football in Como,” he says. “Sometimes I’m shooting a historic Grand Prix in Monaco. Sometimes I’m climbing a mountain in Maine and shooting film at the top. I just love experiencing it all.”

May 25 was a special day for Como 1907 Women, who received several awards at the “B to Be” event organised by Serie B Femminile at the CONI Hall of Honour to celebrate the end of the season.

Fresh from winning the Serie B Femminile title, the team was presented with the “B the Team” award, accepted by midfielder Sofia Colombo on behalf of the squad during the handover ceremony between Serie B President Laura Tinari and Serie A Femminile President Federica Cappelletti. Head coach Selena Mazzantini was also recognised with the “B the Energy” award as the league’s best coach.

The awards for the Lariane also extended to the Primavera squad, who were awarded the trophy for winning Group A of Primavera 2. Forward Beatrice Antoniazzi was honoured as the group’s top scorer after scoring 21 goals in the BiancoBlu shirt.

It was a memorable occasion celebrating the achievements of two teams who will now prepare for Serie A Femminile and the Primavera 1 championship respectively, following a historic 2025/26 season.