Some celebrate the successful defense of the championship lead. The others are happy to have scored the first win of the season and thus reduced the gap to the penultimate. Borussia Mönchengladbach and SC Paderborn are in two different emotional worlds. This week, they face six players of our top eleven.
The reason for this lies with our grading system. The SPIX feeds itself solely from statistical data. Successful Passes, Scoring Opportunities, Conquered Second Balls: All these factors give each player a value that is compared to all other Bundesliga players in the same position. Whether the player kicks for Bayern, Paderborn or Mönchengladbach, is irrelevant.
The most important measure in football remains the goals. These are particularly heavily weighted in the SPIX. So eight of the ten players of our top-eleven were involved in the weekend at least one hit directly.
Goalkeepers do not focus on goal-scoring, but on goal-keeping. Paderborn's 2-0 victory over Fortuna Dusseldorf made the difference. While Dusseldorf keeper Zackary Steffen passed two (admittedly barely durable) degrees, Paderborn goalkeeper Leopold Zingerle showed his strongest Bundesliga performance so far. He gets three parades of the heaviest category. Düsseldorf despaired of Paderborn goalkeeper.
In the center-back position, two completely different player types have achieved top marks: Nico Elvedi (1.88 meters, 78 kilograms) is rather slender for a central defender, but he is technically fogged. In Gladbach 4: 2 win against Eintracht Frankfurt he met head. Leverkusen's Lars Bender, in turn, is smaller than Elvedi (1.85 meters), but also weighs more (82 kilograms). He knows how to use his body in the game against the ball. In the 2: 2 against Werder Bremen, he won all his duels and also caught two opposing passes.
In the full-back position, two scorers have made the leap into the top eleven. Oscar Wendt boosted the offensive game of his Gladbacher, he was constantly in the Frankfurt half to find. He scored the same goal as Leipzig's Lukas Klostermann , who was successful after a cross. However, his goal came too late, RB lost 1: 2 against SC Freiburg.
The player with the most successful dribbling was not a winger this weekend. Bayern's six-man Thiago scored an opponent - best value six times. But not only on the ball towered over the Spaniard. He won 23 second balls, which is the season record in this statistic. He helped decisively that his Bayern in the 2-1 win against Union Berlin could conquer the long balls of the opponent.
Jean-Paul Boëtius has a new job. The Mainz game designer started the season as a tenth. After poor performance, coach Sandro Schwarz changed the system of his team, Boëtius may now run on the wing. That seems to lie to him: In the 3-1 win against Cologne Boëtius scored a goal and prepared one. Paderborn's Kai Pröger came out on Saturday with two assists.
Abdelhamid Sabiri just dared to do something. His daring long-range shot brought Paderborn the 1-0 lead against Dusseldorf. Even otherwise, Sabiris game was unorthodox: Sometimes he appeared before his own defense, sometimes he moved far forward as a second striker. With six goals he was against Dusseldorf the most prominent player on the court. A thoroughly successful start-up debut in the Bundesliga for the under-21 international.
Slowly Marcus Thuram seems to arrive in Mönchengladbach. After he scored only one goal in his first six competitive games for Gladbach, the knot has now burst. In the past five Bundesliga games he was directly involved in six goals, against Frankfurt, he scored the important goal to 1-0. Lucas Alarios score was no less significant: he saved Bayer Leverkusen against Werder Bremen with a goal to 2: 2 one point.