★ Moneyball Original · Opinion
Anastasios Douvikas is so underrated
By Moneyball Editorial · published · updated
Ask a football fan to name Serie A's best strikers and you will hear Lautaro Martínez, Marcus Thuram, Dušan Vlahović, perhaps Rasmus Højlund. You will almost never hear Anastasios Douvikas. He has 5 Serie A goals in 858 minutes for Como this season, 6 more in the Champions League, after 14 Serie A goals last season. He scored a hat-trick in a 9-1 win at Lens. And the conversation still has not caught up.
"Underrated" is the most overused word in football. So Moneyball does what the word never does: it measures. Douvikas against the famous names per 90 minutes, against every forward in Europe as percentiles, the chances behind his goals, what those chances are worth to Como in points, and what Scouting Players Research says he is worth in money. Twelve methods. One question: is he really that good, and is he really that ignored?
The striker nobody noticed arriving
Douvikas, a Greece international born in 1999, took the long road. He made his name in the Eredivisie with Utrecht, moved to Celta Vigo in La Liga, where he spent most of his time on the bench behind established forwards, and joined Cesc Fàbregas' Como in 2025. Clubs pay for strikers with a big league's stamp on their record. Douvikas did not have one. That is exactly why he was cheap, and exactly why he is underrated: the market priced the career, not the player. Fourteen Serie A goals later, it is still catching up.
1. The season so far
| Season 2026/27 | Matches | Minutes | Goals | Assists | xG | Goals − xG | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serie A | 11 | 858 | 5 | 0 | 4.77 | +0.2 | 6.87 |
| Champions League | 4 | 246 | 6 | 2 | 1.87 | +4.1 | 7.84 |
| Both | 15 | 1104 | 11 | 2 | 6.64 | +4.4 | 7.09 |
Across Serie A and the Champions League Douvikas has 11 goals and 2 assists in 1104 minutes: a goal every 100 minutes. He is +4.4 goals above his chances, the part of the run the regression method expects to cool a little.
2. Douvikas against Serie A's famous strikers
| Striker (Serie A) | Minutes | Goals | Goals per 90 | xG per 90 | Moneyball Score | Moneyball Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lautaro Martínez | 353 | 4 | 1.02 | 1.23 | 71 | €25.4M |
| Nikola Krstović | 710 | 7 | 0.89 | 0.72 | 76 | €47.1M |
| Marcus Thuram | 723 | 6 | 0.75 | 0.72 | 70 | €26.2M |
| Anastasios Douvikas | 858 | 5 | 0.52 | 0.50 | 63 | €26.3M |
| Rasmus Højlund | 705 | 3 | 0.38 | 0.47 | 46 | €15.6M |
Sorted by goals per 90 minutes, Douvikas is 4th of 5. The famous names are ahead of him on this one measure, and the rest of the article shows where he wins. Moneyball Scout puts him at €26.3M, in the same bracket as Lautaro Martínez and Marcus Thuram, and above Rasmus Højlund. On the numbers he belongs in this company; in the conversation he is nowhere near it. That gap is what underrated means.
3. Among Serie A's best, per 90 minutes
Among every Serie A player with 450 minutes or more:
| # | Player | Club | Goals per 90 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Donyell Malen | Roma | 1.10 |
| 2 | Gustavo Varela | Monza | 0.95 |
| 3 | Antonio Raimondo | Frosinone | 0.95 |
| 4 | Nikola Krstović | Atalanta | 0.89 |
| 5 | Marcus Thuram | Inter | 0.75 |
| 6 | Diego Moreira | AC Milan | 0.74 |
| 7 | Adrien Rabiot | AC Milan | 0.68 |
| 8 | Christian Pulisic | AC Milan | 0.66 |
Douvikas is just outside this list. On total goals he is 9th.
| # | Player | Club | Expected goals per 90 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Donyell Malen | Roma | 1.18 |
| 2 | Nikola Krstović | Atalanta | 0.72 |
| 3 | Marcus Thuram | Inter | 0.72 |
| 4 | Antonio Raimondo | Frosinone | 0.68 |
| 5 | Pio Esposito | Inter | 0.53 |
| 6 | Anastasios Douvikas | Como | 0.50 |
| 7 | Gustavo Varela | Monza | 0.48 |
| 8 | Rasmus Højlund | Napoli | 0.47 |
He is 6th for expected goals per 90: the chances are good and the finishing is better.
4. Against every forward in Europe
| Measure (Serie A and Champions League) | Douvikas | Percentile among Europe's forwards |
|---|---|---|
| Goals per 90 | 0.90 | 92nd |
| Expected goals (xG) per 90 | 0.54 | 82nd |
| Shots per 90 | 3.0 | 69th |
| Shots on target per 90 | 1.6 | 86th |
| Duels won per 90 | 3.3 | 15th |
| Fouls won per 90 | 1.9 | 78th |
| Match rating | 7.09 | 74th |
Percentiles against every forward with 450 minutes or more in the five big leagues and the Champions League. 3 measures in the top fifth: goals per 90, expected goals (xG) per 90, shots on target per 90.
5. The finishing, honestly
In Serie A 13 of his 28 shots have been on target (46%). He has also missed 8 big chances. That sounds like a weakness. Moneyball reads it the other way: you only miss big chances if you keep getting them, and he gets more than almost anyone. A striker who converts a couple more of those is not a different player; he is the same player in a better month. His Serie A goals (5) are close to his xG (4.77): no streak to cool.
6. The Champions League test
The fairest test of a striker is the competition where the opponents do not change. In the Champions League Douvikas has 6 goals and 2 assists in 246 minutes, with a match rating of 7.84, including the hat-trick in Como's 9-1 win at Lens. Moneyball Scout weighs a European minute above a league minute, so these nights are part of his score, not a footnote to it.
7. What his chances are worth to Como
Como create 1.71 xG a match and allow 1.33: through the Dixon-Coles matrix a match played like that is a Como win 46% of the time, 1.62 points. Douvikas' own chances are 0.43 of that xG per match. Give his minutes to an average Serie A forward (0.30 xG per 90) and Como win 41% of the time, 1.51 points a match. Over a 38-match season that is about +4.4 points before a single chance is finished. In a league where the Champions League places are decided by a handful of points, that is the difference between Europe's top competition and the one below it.
8. Como around him
Como are 5th in Serie A on 23 points from 11 matches. Expected points put their football at 18.0 (5th); the Pi-rating ranks them 5th, and their shrunk xG margin plays out to about 64 points (5th). A club promoted in 2024, competing with Italy's giants, with a striker almost nobody outside Italy talks about leading the line.
9. Scouting Players Research: the report
Anastasios Douvikas, 27, plays as a centre-forward for Como in Serie A. Strongest for his role in shots on target and goals, luck taken out. Weakest in duels won.
| Scouting Players Research | Anastasios Douvikas |
|---|---|
| Role and type | Centre-forward, poacher |
| Moneyball Score (league and European cups, adjusted for strength) | 63 |
| Rank among the centre-forwards of 16 leagues | 95th of 1148 |
| Rank among the centre-forwards of his league | 13th of 53 |
| Moneyball Value (estimate) | €13.9M to €38.7M (mid €26.3M) |
| Age curve: score in 1, 2, 3, 4 years | 66 · 66 · 66 · 63 |
| What Scouting weighs for his role | Percentile among centre-forwards |
|---|---|
| Expected goals | 81st |
| Goals, luck taken out | 88th |
| Shots | 65th |
| Shot quality (xG per shot) | 76th |
| Aerial duels won | 23rd |
| Shots on target | 89th |
| Duels won | 20th |
| Key passes | 38th |
The players most like him
| Most like him in Scouting | Club | Similarity |
|---|---|---|
| Ricardo Pepi | PSV | 92% |
| Nathan Fogaça | Mirassol | 92% |
| Cédric Bakambu | San Diego | 91% |
| Odsonne Édouard | Lens | 90% |
| Samu Aghehowa | Porto | 90% |
A Moneyball Value of €26.3M for a striker scoring at this rate in Serie A and the Champions League is the gap the word "underrated" is trying to describe. Clubs that buy by reputation will pay more for less.
The Moneyball verdict
Yes, Douvikas is underrated, even if the famous names still edge him on some measures. He has done it in the Champions League, and his chances alone are worth around +4 points a season to Como. He is not a highlight-reel striker. He does not dribble past four players or score from 30 yards. He arrives in the right place, at the right moment, and finishes. That kind of striker has always been undervalued by the market and always been loved by the numbers. The caution is the usual one: the minutes are still few, and Scouting shrinks his score toward the average until they grow. But after 14 goals last season and this start, the burden of proof has moved: it is now on anyone who still thinks he is not one of the best strikers in Italy.
- Expected goals (xG): the quality of every chance, so a team is judged on what it created and allowed, not only on what went in.
- Finishing and goalkeeping regression: goals against xG at both ends. A big gap either way rarely lasts a season.
- Comparison with the famous strikers: goals and xG per 90 against Serie A's best-known centre-forwards with 300 minutes or more.
- Per-90 leaders: Serie A's goals and expected goals per 90 minutes, among players with 450 minutes or more.
- Percentiles: his figures per 90 against every forward with 450 minutes in the five leagues and the Champions League.
- Shot quality and big chances: shots on target and big chances missed, read as evidence of the chances he gets.
- European weighting: Champions League minutes read at the competition's own level and weighted above a league minute.
- Dixon-Coles points value: Como's xG through the score matrix, with his chances and with an average Serie A forward's in the same minutes.
- Expected points: each match's xG run through a Dixon-Coles score matrix (the Poisson model with the low-score correction the Match Board uses) to give the points a performance usually earns.
- Pi-ratings: a rating for every club at home and away, moved after each result by how far the goal margin beat or missed what the ratings expected.
- Projection: the shrunk strength played out against an average opponent for every match left, added to the points already won.
- Moneyball Score, value, age curve and similarity (Scouting Players Research): every figure that matters for his role as a percentile against his position across 16 leagues.
Analysis by Moneyball Editorial. His 14 Serie A goals in 2025/26, the hat-trick at Lens and his earlier clubs are the published record. Every other figure is read from the Sportmonks data at each update, and the sentences around it change with it.
Anastasios Douvikas in the Stats Centre Anastasios Douvikas in Scouting Players Research Como in the Stats Centre
Questions
- How many goals has Anastasios Douvikas scored this season?
- 5 in Serie A in 858 minutes, plus 6 goals and 2 assists in the Champions League, from 6.64 expected goals across both.
- How many goals did Douvikas score last season?
- 14 Serie A goals and 1 assist for Como in 2025/26, his first season in Italy after Utrecht and Celta Vigo.
- Is Douvikas better than Serie A's famous strikers?
- On goals per 90 minutes he is 4th of the 5 Serie A strikers compared in this article, a list that includes Lautaro Martínez, Nikola Krstović, Marcus Thuram.
- What is Douvikas worth?
- Moneyball Scout's estimate is €13.9M to €38.7M (mid €26.3M), from his Moneyball Score, age, league and position.
- Where do the numbers come from?
- Sportmonks match, team and player data, read by the Moneyball engine and Moneyball Scout and refreshed with every update of the site.