Best Of The Rest Top Five: Robin Soder and Patson Daka are flawless
This weekend, most of the attention in Sweden was on Djurgaarden claiming their first championship for 15 years, but the performance of the round belongs to Goteborg, who destroyed Ostersund 7-1 to finish seventh in the Allsvenskan. Centre-forward Soder was responsible for two of the goals, but could have had even more as he had seven shots in total. He was key for the home side through his hold-up play, and very rarely wasted possession as he completed 28 out of 33 attempted passes and had 51 touches in total.
Red Bull Salzburg continued their unbeaten run to the new campaign with a comfortable 3-0 win away versus Mattersburg, with Zambian Daka once again proving the driving force with a superb hat-trick. His first and third goals were both due to the awful saves of opposition goalkeeper Tino Casali, who dropped two easy saves right to his feet. There was no element of luck in his second, however, as he nearly burst the net with a ferocious half-volley into the top corner from 20 yards. He also won the majority of his duels, as well as 100% of his tackles.
Remarkably, Zhegrova earned the high rating despite not starting Basel's match against Neuchatel, with him coming on 16 minutes in. His main contribution to the match came with an assist for the equalising goal to make it 1-1, darting ahead of the defender to steal possession before whipping a superb cross into the box for Kemal Ademi to score. That was one of eight crosses he put into the area, while only team-mate Fabian Frei made more passes into the final third in this round of Bundesliga games. He had 86 touches after coming on, and completed seven dribbles.
AZ maintained their second place in the Eredivisie after defeating Twente 3-0 on Saturday. Wijndal aided his team's cause by assisting the first and third goals. For the opener, he played a simple pass for Pantelis Hatzidiakos to drill a superb strike home, while the third saw him thread a lovely ball into the feet of Myron Boadu. Incredibly, five AZ players had the most touches in the whole of this round of fixtures, with Wijndal having 106.
While Soder will take most of the plaudits after Goteborg's 7-1 demolition of Ostersund, Yusuf was key to the win, too. The Nigerian made the 5-1 scoreline look worse for the visitors by scoring two goals in the last five minutes, and it was no less than he deserved after commanding the midfield. As well as contributing with an assist previously in the game, he misplaced just six passes and made six ball recoveries.
ROUND TO FORGET
No real surprise to see an Ostersund player here, as defender Thomas Isherwood (4.2) was hopeless at the back. He made zero tackles, lost his only duel, and didn't compete against anyone aerially.