🦁 Premier League Player of the Week: Hungary for more | OneFootball

With the September internationals around the corner and deadline day approaching, this weekend felt oddly pivotal at such an early stage in the campaign.

And with that in our mind, our Player of the Week is ...

Dominik Szoboszlai (Liverpool)

📸 Carl Recine - 2025 Getty Images

There are some footballers who seize a moment and never let it go. On a tense Sunday at Anfield, as Liverpool and Arsenal fought themselves to a standstill, Dominik Szoboszlai did just that.

What began as a cautious, tactical duel ended in a single flash of genius from a Hungarian who seems determined to make himself indispensable in whatever role Arne Slot asks of him.

The stage was perfect for drama: 83 minutes gone, the scoreboard locked at 0-0, nerves jangling in a ground that has witnessed its fair share of late winners. Up stepped Szoboszlai, not from his familiar midfield perch but from the right-back berth he had been asked to occupy out of necessity.

He placed the ball some 32 yards from goal, struck it with that elegant, upright technique of his, and watched as it bent and dipped past David Raya.

The Kop roared, Arsenal slumped, and Liverpool claimed the sort of victory that feels like it will matter come spring.

This was no ordinary free-kick. It was Liverpool’s first direct set-piece goal not struck by Trent Alexander-Arnold or Philippe Coutinho since February 2016. It was their latest such winner since Steven Gerrard in 2007.

it was, too, the longest-distance free-kick scored in the Premier League this season. One strike, and Szoboszlai had placed himself in rarefied company, his name to be remembered alongside two modern Anfield icons.

But to reduce his afternoon to a single moment would do him a disservice. Slot did not pick Szoboszlai at right-back for his free-kick ability; he picked him because he trusted his intelligence, stamina and willingness to graft.

The statistics justify that faith. Over the course of last season he was one of only 11 players in the Premier League to record more than 200 pressures in the final third and 300 in the middle third.

He attempted 240 counter-pressures – third in the division – and his average of 11.9 per 90 minutes ranked him just behind Dominic Solanke and Marcus Tavernier. In other words, he runs, he harries, he wins the ball back where it hurts opponents most.

Nor does he simply chase shadows. Szoboszlai is among the league’s most potent transition players, involved in 19 shot-ending fast breaks last term, a tally bettered only by Mohamed Salah, Cole Palmer, Matheus Cunha and Nicolas Jackson.

In a Liverpool team that has long thrived on quick surges from defence to attack, that quality is priceless. Marry those numbers to the touch of artistry he displayed against Arsenal, and you have a footballer who blends industry with inspiration.

No wonder The Guardian handed him a nine out of ten, the highest mark on the pitch. No wonder Mikel Arteta admitted afterwards that his team were undone not by a tactical flaw but by a “magic moment.” Even Raya, beaten from a distance where he might reasonably expect to be safe, admitted that the ball swerved in a way that left him helpless.

Szoboszlai, meanwhile, barely celebrated: a clenched fist, a roar to the night sky, then straight back to his defensive station. It was a captain’s response from a player who is not yet captain.

If the Premier League is a theatre, then every matchweek offers its leading man. In week three, there was no contest. Szoboszlai did not simply score the goal of the weekend - he produced the performance of it too, one that carried the statistical backbone of relentless pressing and transition play, and the show-stealing flourish of a goal that will live long in the memory.

At 24, he already looks like a footballer who can define Liverpool’s season.

📸 Alex Pantling - 2025 Getty Images