Nicolas Paz touches more balls and shoots less

Nicolas Paz is 22, Argentinian, plays for Como and in our price list he is a C (midfielder) worth 29 credits: among the 233 midfielders listed, nobody costs more than him, and he is the fourth name in the player of the day rotation, which runs from the most expensive downwards. FantaTB estimates his starting likelihood at 90%. The story of this start of the season, though, is not the price: it is that the way he plays has changed. Paz touches many more balls than a year ago and shoots far less.

The 2025-26 Serie A season was his breakthrough: 35 appearances, 33 as a starter, 2,884 minutes, 12 goals and 6 assists. In those minutes he produced 86 total shots, 48 of them on target, 51 key passes and 1,394 passes at 82.0% accuracy, plus 91 tackles and 69 successful dribbles out of 125 attempted. His appearance-weighted API-Football average rating was 7.31. One detail for anyone buying him for the heavy bonuses: from the spot he scored 0 goals from 2 penalties taken.

The honest comparison is per 90 minutes, over the 2,884 minutes of last season's Serie A against the 330 of this one. Passes rise from 43.50 to 63.55 per 90 minutes (+46.1%) and accuracy from 82.0% to 89.0%; tackles go from 2.84 to 4.64 (+63.3%), the mark of a player far more involved in the game even without the ball. The shooting numbers move the other way: shots on target drop from 1.50 to 0.82 per 90 minutes (-45.4%) and goals from 0.37 to 0.27 (-27.2%). Assists, on the other hand, rise from 0.19 to 0.27 (+45.7%). It is the portrait of a player who, in this opening stretch, builds more than he finishes.

Our FantaTB fantasy points — we calculate them ourselves, they are not a newspaper's ratings — still say the output has not dropped: an average rating of 6.62 and a fantasy average of 7.62 over 4 appearances with a rating, with 1 goal and 1 assist. That fantasy average puts him in the 94th percentile among the 157 midfielders in the list for whom we have the figure. The four fantasy scores are 6.0, 6.0, 10.0 and 8.5: two workmanlike games and two that decided the round for whoever fielded him. For goals plus assists per 90 minutes in this Serie A he sits at 0.55, the 84th percentile among 75 midfielders.

The context helps to read the rest. Como are third with 10 points from four rounds, three wins and a draw, 9 goals scored and 4 conceded, an average of 60.8% possession and 22.2 shots per game, 7.0 of them on target. The team produces 1.93 xG per game and concedes 1.59: these are team numbers, individual player xG does not exist in our data, and they are calculated over the 3 games out of 4 that carry a statistics block. Round five takes them to Frosinone, at the Benito Stirpe stadium, on 20 September at 13:00 UTC: the hosts are seventh with 7 points, form LWWD, 1.80 goals scored and 1.00 conceded per game, a single clean sheet in four and 2.06 xG conceded per game. On the eve of the match, ANSA reports, Raimondo insisted on Frosinone's own identity: this will be no stroll.

On availability, our data flag neither injuries nor suspensions. His probability of starting in round five is 90%, with three starts in the last three games, and he appears in the projected line-ups at 94%. What to expect, with no promises: a midfielder who right now influences games through build-up rather than through shooting, inside a side that creates a lot and concedes little. Como have not taken a single penalty in the league yet, so the shortcut of spot-kick bonuses is not there for now. If his aim returns to last season's level the goals can climb again; if it stays like this, Paz's value will be measured above all in assists and in the steadiness of his ratings.