Player Review

I was really looking forward to trying this guy out after getting him in an untradeable 100k pack 10 minutes after he was released, but unfortunately, despite seeing 94 SHO on his card, he is a genuinely poor striker in my opinion. For a guy that's won the Ballon d'Or in real life, commanded a world record transfer fee, and, most importantly, has pretty much perfect shooting stats, I was expecting good things. Disappointed is an understatement. His shooting is decent if you ever get a chance to use it, but unless your style of play sets up good opportunities or one-touch finishes for strikers in the right place at the right time, you won't get a feel of how good his shooting is as he simply can't do anything to create chances for himself.

Even with a hunter he felt fairly slow, he is small so his good heading stats goes pretty much unused (and even when he wins them heading is a lottery in FIFA 23 regardless of heading acc.), he isn't strong and his in-game dribbling stat of 81, as well as 3-star Skill Moves are woeful for a small striker with limited pace. All this combines to create a striker who is purely a penalty box player to finish off moves given to him on a plate, via opposition mistakes or nice build-up play (this is slightly helped by a 4* WF & the outside foot shot trait). Given the insane amount of good forward options this year, Papin already feels one dimensional and outdated.

As a comparison, I currently use the FUT Champions version of IF Sørloth, who is faster, lengthy & better in the air, whilst also somehow possessing a better first touch and equally complete finishing.

Overall for just under 100,000 coins (at the time of writing), you can get strikers with multiple options for creating chances for themselves when Papin is purely a finisher who contributes little to nothing outside of kicking the ball in the goal 8 times out of 10.