🇩🇪 Bundesliga Player of the Week - Hungry like a wolf | OneFootball

Our Bundesliga Player of the Week has to be …

Max Kruse (VfL Wolfsburg)

Wolfsburg may just be the most inconsistent side in Europe. A 4-0 win over Arminia Bielefeld was followed by a 6-1 defeat at Borussia Dortmund, so Mainz had no idea what to expect when they arrived at the Volkswagen Arena on Friday evening.

Well, they were on the receiving end of some pretty impressive record breaking.

It was Max Kruse’s fine touch that put Lukas Nmecha through on goal to win a penalty with the hosts already a goal up. Kruse himself stepped up to double the lead from the spot.

He had a second 11 minutes later, superbly driving the ball home as a looping cross from Ridle Baku arrived, and he wasn’t done there. A hat-trick nearly arrived on 42 minutes but team-mate Jonas Wind got to a loose ball first to make it 4-0 but Kruse would have another chance, from the spot again, before the break.

And he made no mistake. He rarely does from 12 yards (or 11 metres, as the Germans refer to it) and now boasts a record of 25 goals from 26 top flight penalties.

Kruse became the first player in Wolfsburg history to score a first half Bundesliga hat-trick and the team took a five-goal lead into the break for the first time ever in the league.

“There are worse ways to start a weekend,” Kruse said to DAZN after the match. Talk about an understatement.

The win wasn’t just spectacular but an important one for a side that has 16 points and 22 goals from 11 games since Kruse re-joined from Union Berlin in January. They had managed just 21 points and 17 goals from the 20 games before his arrival.

“We can’t tell ourselves that it’s over now,” Kruse added, as his side closed in on safety.

“We knew there was a lot at stake today. Had we lost, next week would’ve been massive, a game with everything on the line.”

Now Wolfsburg can breathe as they take on 16th-placed VfB Stuttgart, who sit nine points behind with three games to go.

“Mathematically we could still go down, but we’ve given ourselves some breathing space and we want to finish the job next weekend.”