Como midfielder Jayden Osei Addai heads into the final weeks of pre-season facing a structural problem that has nothing to do with his own form: the club he plays for is building toward Champions League football with a roster that FÃ bregas himself has warned may not be large enough to sustain it.
The lariani finished fifth in Serie A 2025-26 on 68 points — 19 wins, 11 draws, seven defeats, 61 goals scored and only 28 conceded — a defensive record that speaks to genuine organisation rather than fortune. That achievement earns Como a seat at European football's top table for the first time in the club's modern history. Fà bregas has publicly acknowledged the squad could be forced to contest the Champions League with as few as 16 or 17 players if reinforcements do not arrive. For a 20-year-old with three Serie A goals across 12 appearances and an average match rating of 6.90, that warning cuts two ways.
On one reading, a thin squad is an opportunity. Osei Addai's season statistics — modest in volume, solid in quality — suggest a player who contributes when trusted rather than one who inflates numbers through accumulated minutes. Three goals from 12 matches is a meaningful return for a midfielder of his age and profile. The rating of 6.90 is not spectacular, but it is consistent, and consistency is precisely what a stretched squad demands.
The other reading is less comfortable. Como are pursuing Jhon Lucumà from Bologna, have been linked to Trent Alexander-Arnold's former Chelsea teammate Chalobah, and are operating in a transfer window where every senior arrival narrows the space available to developing players. The club's decision to ban headers for youth academy players under 12 signals long-term thinking about player welfare, but Osei Addai is not a youth academy player — he is a first-team asset whose AI overall rating of 50 out of 100 against a potential ceiling of 68 marks him as a player still in the process of becoming rather than one who has arrived.
FÃ bregas's Como drew 2-2 with Paris FC in a July friendly, a result that confirmed the attacking intent the lariani carried through their Serie A campaign. Whether Osei Addai featured in that match is not confirmed by available information, which itself says something about where he currently sits in the pecking order.
The squad depth problem Fà bregas has flagged is real, and it creates genuine uncertainty about how minutes will be distributed once European group-stage fixtures begin. Osei Addai's best argument for a larger role is not his potential ceiling but the three goals already on the board — evidence that when the opportunity comes, he has taken it.