🇩🇪 Bundesliga Player of the Week: Italian stallion | OneFootball

It is nothing but a shame that our Bundesliga Player of the Week will have his feet up all winter …

Vincenzo Grifo (SC Freiburg)

Grab the chance to watch Vincenzo Grifo while you still can.

On this form, the creative winger would be a shoe-in for Italy’s World Cup squad. But, like the rest of his countrymen, he will be watching this winter’s tournament from afar. For Grifo, who has two goals in six caps but was not in the squad as Italy won Euro 2020, that must be a bitter disappointment.

And it should be for the rest of us too, considering it means we will have to go from 13 November to 21 January without watching him in action.

Not blessed with electric pace, Grifo is something of a throwback as a wide player, a technically gifted set-piece expert. With vision and selflessness to match his technical ability, the 29-year-old has carved out a role as one of the Bundesliga’s least flashy yet still wildly effective players. A game-changer.

And he was exactly that as SC Freiburg visited Schalke on Sunday.

Having watched the two teams who started the weekend above them — Union Berlin and Bayern Munich — both pick up three points, and been leapfrogged by Borussia Dortmund, Freiburg struggled to get going in Gelsenkirchen.

They were, as expected, the side more likely to open the deadlock early on but Schalke had grabbed a foothold as the first half went on. Freiburg had registered eight shots in the opening 32 minutes but didn’t muster another until the 46th. Luckily for them, the ball fell to Grifo on that occasion.

Without hesitation and with precision, he found the far corner to set them on their way.

A second half penalty sealed all three points and it was, again, the cool, collected approach of the Italian that had the away fans bouncing.

It was the fourth game this season that Freiburg have won that would have finished 0-0 without Grifo scoring or assisting.

There is no doubt that the star at the club is the team, there is no one standout individual, but the 29-year-old gets closer than anyone.