🇩🇪 Bundesliga Player of the Week: Easy as ABC | OneFootball

A straightforward choice after a superb hat-trick. Our Bundesliga Player of the Week is …

Karim Onisiwo (Mainz)

A week ago on Saturday, Karim Onisiwo was criticised for both his performance and his body language as Mainz drew with Stuttgart. And not just by those inside the club.

“I had to tell him, otherwise I wouldn’t have been doing my job properly,” coach Bo Svensson admitted.

Fast-forward to Saturday afternoon and it clearly had the desired impact as Onisiwo stuck a hat-trick against VfL Bochum.

Drifting across the frontline all afternoon, it was a driving run inside from the 30-year-old that saw the hosts score their second, a superb spin setting him free before he ran into the box, dragged two defenders with him, and the ball bounced free for Silvan Widmer to tap in.

He was just getting started.

A loose backpass saw him pounce on the ball behind the backline and the Austrian didn’t look back, driving into the box again before beautifully clipping the ball over goalkeeper Manuel Riemann from a tight angle.

Riemann was equal to Onisiwo’s next effort, keeping the score down to 3-0 at the break, but not the one after that. Put through on the right, Onisiwo calmly found the far corner.

After his first was delicately finished and his second calmly, the goal to seal his hat-trick nearly ripped the net out of the goal.

Bochum had threatened to come back, slicing the deficit from 4-0 to 4-2, and were piling the pressure on when a long ball came back the other way. After a couple of bounces nobody had gathered possession before the ball fell to Aymen Barkok.

The midfielder gently played a looping pass over the top and it was bouncing nicely for Onisiwo by the time he got to it at the edge of the box to strike a sweet half-volley into the near top corner. He had saved his best effort for last.

“The guy is insane,” Mainz sporting director Martin Schmidt said after the game.

“He should’ve been tired playing his third game in a week. If the ref hadn’t blown for full-time, Karim would still be out there running around.”

Onisiwo didn’t see things the same way and suggested his underwhelming performance the previous week was no more than a case of him finding his stride.

“I was out for 10 weeks, so I needed the first couple of games to find some form.”

That form has certainly been found now.