🇩🇪 Bundesliga Player of the Week: Bayern's boogeyman | OneFootball

Nobody enjoys facing the league’s best team more than he does. Our Bundesliga Player of the Week is …

Jonas Hofmann (Borussia M’Gladbach)

Nobody in the Bundesliga has played as many as Jonas Hofmann’s 60 key passes in the Bundesliga this season. With Julian Brandt second with 50, nobody else even comes close.

Intelligent movement combined with technical ability and calm on the ball, Hofmann has been one of the Bundesliga’s more underrated players in recent seasons and the same is true in 2022/23, even as many of his team-mates struggle for consistency.

So when they all deliver, like they did on Saturday, they give him a real platform to shine.

Many players would — or indeed do — fear playing Bayern Munich but Gladbach seem to rise to the challenge, winning six and drawing two of their last 12 games against the perennial German champions ahead of Saturday’s meeting.

You can now make that seven wins from the last 13 meetings between the clubs.

“You have to say, yeah, with Bayern there’s always a little bit of extra motivation,” Hofmann told ZDF’s Sportstudio after the match. “I think you saw that today with a lot of the players.”

That’s certainly true for the 30-year-old.

Directly involved in all three Gladbach goals, Hofmann was a continuous thorn in Bayern’s side.

Of course it helped that Bayern went down to ten men within eight minutes, with Julian Nagelsmann incensed that Dayot Upamecano was shown red after making minimal contact with Alassane Pléa as the striker ran through on goal. But Gladbach still had to get the job done.

They were set on their way by Lars Stindl, who fired low and hard from the edge of the area after a smart free-kick by Hofmann teed him up.

Bayern equalised but it was Hofmann again who put the hosts back in front. The German international arrived on hand to play a perfect through ball to put Pléa in behind before continuing his run for a return pass. He received one and he found the bottom corner, leaving former team-mate Yann Sommer no chance in goal.

With Bayern pushing for a way back into the game, Gladbach raced away on the break for their third and that man Hofmann played another perfect pass, squaring the ball for Marcus Thuram to make it 3-1.

That saw Hofmann draw level with Marco Reus as the current Bundesliga player with the most direct goal involvements against Bayern.

Talk about rising to the occasion.