🇩🇪 Bundesliga Player of the Week - Endo product | OneFootball

Another fine performance, and this time with end product.

Our Bundesliga player of the week is …

Wataru Endo (VfB Stuttgart)

A superb midfielder, Endo isn’t the usually man providing goals and assists.

Sitting in front of the Stuttgart backline, the Japanese sets the tone, week after week.

The tone with the ball, with his superb and intelligent passing, and the tone without the ball, co-ordinating the pressing of the players in front of him, joining in when needed, and sweeping up in front of the defence.

“Wataru is there to guard the team,” sporting director Sven Mislintat said.

“He is so clever in challenges and has really superb feet. He’s our leader. He belongs in the heart of things for us.”

Before Saturday, Endo had no goals and one assist in 22 Bundesliga appearances this season.

“He does the dirty work for us,” goalkeeper Gregor Kobel added.

But on Saturday he added so much more, scoring twice and assisting twice in the demolition of Schalke.

It was the sort of end product that brings the sort of adulation that Endo has deserved all season long.

His first goal was a superb volley, clinically dispatched when he found himself free at the back post as a corner was swung in.

That was no accident, with replays showing him checking over his shoulder and ghosting into space as two Schalke defenders were attracted beyond him and got caught under the ball.

His second was, well, it was the same. Smart enough to stick with what worked, Endo pulled off the same move and scored again, this time tucking in a corner from the other side of the pitch that somehow bounced all the way through the penalty area.

Schalke thought they were back in the game from 3-0 down, scoring once and then being awarded a very generous penalty after Amine Harit went down under pressure from Endo. But Kobel saved from Nabil Bentaleb and Stuttgart marched on into the closing stages.

Endo, who hasn’t missed a minute of any game he’s featured in all season, went from strength to strength, teeing up Philipp Klement and then Daniel Didavi to each score a spectacular effort to make it 4-1, and then 5-1 in the dying stages.

Only one Stuttgart player completed more passes and nobody made more clearances. This was a true all-round performance.

“He is almost at a world class level,” SC Freiburg boss Christian Streich recently said of the midfielder.

“I am certain he’s already being watched by the absolute top clubs.”

And so he should be.