There are football stories shaped by family, geography or fate. Jed Meekins and KACS arrived at Como another way. They found it almost by accident, and then kept coming back until it became part of who they are.
The story begins in 2003 in a pub on the Isle of Wight. Jed and his friends had planned a trip to Milan and thought they might take in a match while they were there. But neither of the Milan clubs were playing that week, so they looked for the nearest game instead. It was Como against Lazio at Sinigaglia, played in the rain on what Jed still remembers as a bad day.
It should have been a one off. Instead, it became the beginning of something that has now lasted more than twenty years.
“We decided to go to Milan, and we said maybe we go to a Milan game. But no Milan teams were playing that week, so we said the nearest team is Como,” Jed recalls. “We came to Como, watched the game, and then said right, we’ll go back there.”
They did. The following year brought another trip, this time for Como against Livorno, a match that ended in a 5 2 defeat. Even that did not put them off. By then, something had already clicked. The city felt different. The supporters felt different. The whole experience got under their skin.
“So we came back again, and then again, and again,” Jed says. “This is our twentieth time, but it’s because of the guys. It’s such a fantastic place. We’ve been here when there were maybe 500 people, and now you can’t get any more people in. So we’ve seen right down the bottom in the lower leagues and now Serie A.”
That is what gives the story its emotional weight. KACS did not arrive for the glamour years. They have seen Como in very different moments, from sparse crowds to a full Sinigaglia, from the lower leagues to the top flight. Their connection to the club has been built over time, trip by trip, season by season.
What makes Jed such a compelling voice is the simplicity of his explanation. He does not overstate it. For him, it always comes back to the same things. “The place is fantastic, the football is fantastic, and the people are fantastic.”
Above all, it is the welcome that has stayed with them. Over the years, KACS have built real friendships in the city, returned to the same restaurants and found familiar faces waiting for them. “They made us really, really welcome, really, really friendly,” Jed says. “They look after us. They buy us drinks. We know the same restaurants, the people we know. Fantastic. Really, really good place.”
There is something revealing too in the way he talks about football culture. In England, he says, people love the game. In Italy, and especially in Como, the feeling is different. More intense, more consuming, more woven into everyday life. “It’s different in England,” he says. “We like our football, but in Italy it’s a different passion. It’s just all about football, and that’s what we love.”
And yet it is never only about football. Jed laughs that Como is the kind of place he would take his wife for “a romantic holiday”, which says plenty about the city itself. The beauty of the lake, the rhythm of the town and the trips they have made around the area have all become part of the tradition too. “Absolutely. Fantastic,” he says of the city. “We’ve been up to Bellagio and we’ve been to Milan. The actual place is fantastic.”
Now that bond sits within something bigger. Jed talks about more UK supporters following Como and the possibility of an even larger turnout if the club ever play in England. What began with one pub on the Isle of Wight now feels part of a wider international community around the club, but the essence of it remains unchanged.