Como midfielder Jayden Osei Addai heads into his second Serie A preseason as a peripheral figure in a transfer window that is reshaping the club around him — and the shape of that rebuild will determine how much space he occupies in Fàbregas's plans come August.
The stakes are structural. Como, fifth in the table on 68 points after a 37-match season that produced 61 goals and conceded only 28, have earned a place in next season's Champions League group phase. That is a different competition with different demands, and Fàbregas is responding accordingly. The club is closing in on Cruzeiro left-back Kaiki Bruno for a reported fee in the region of €14–15 million, and negotiations with Real Madrid over Nico Paz's future — whether he stays or departs for a reported €60 million — will define the creative architecture of the squad. These are not marginal decisions. They are the kind of decisions that compress minutes for players on the fringes of the first eleven.
Osei Addai's debut season produced three goals across 12 appearances, with an average rating of 6.90. Those are the numbers of a player who contributed without commanding — useful in rotation, not yet indispensable. At 20, that is not a criticism; it is a baseline. The question is whether a Champions League campaign accelerates his development or simply adds more competition above him in the pecking order.
The Paz situation is particularly relevant. If Real Madrid exercise their option and reclaim the Argentine, Como lose their most creative central presence and a gap opens. If Paz stays, the midfield hierarchy remains largely intact and Osei Addai's path to regular starts stays narrow. Neither outcome is straightforwardly good or bad for him — it depends on whether Fàbregas views him as a like-for-like option in that creative register or as a different kind of midfielder entirely.
His AI overall rating of 50 out of a potential 68 suggests the ceiling is credible, but the distance between current and potential is not closed by time alone. It requires minutes, and minutes at a club now operating in European competition are harder to guarantee than they were in a mid-table Serie A season. Sergi Roberto's departure, confirmed in recent reports, removes one senior presence from the dressing room — a small but real shift in the squad's internal balance.
Osei Addai does not need a transfer or a headline to advance his case. He needs a preseason in which Fàbregas sees enough to trust him with 20-minute cameos in the early Champions League qualifiers, and enough consistency to convert those into starts. The club is building upward. Whether he rises with it or gets squeezed by the ambition around him is the only question that matters now.