Man of the Month: November 2016

Wow, that was a long month, wasn’t it? Thanksgiving, election day, and national saxophone day have all come and gone, and Borussia Dortmund can look back on a very rocky 5 matches. Here were all results from last month:

Borussia Dortmund 1:0 Sporting Lisbon :)

Hamburg 2:5 Borussia Dortmund :D

Borussia Dortmund 1:0 FC Bayern XD

Borussia Dortmund 8:4 Legia Warsaw >XD

Eintracht Frankfurt 2:1 Borussia Dortmund :’(

Like the month of October, November was characterized by patchy performances from different players. At certain times, Julian Weigl dominated the pitch; at other times, he was completely isolated. During Der Klassiker, Mario Götze gave one of the best performances of his career; other times, he was invisible. However, in my opinion, there was one player who consistently showed his importance to the club.

Photo by Alex Grimm/Bongarts/Getty Images

What would we ever do without our Greek Warrior? (We’d give up four goals to Legia Warsaw at home, that’s what we’d do.) Sokratis consistently showed why he should be considered one of the best defenders in the world, and why Borussia Dortmund may have only lost its second best CB last summer. In a match where Mats Hummels was busy getting nutmegged, and eventually playing as a center forward, Sokratis, along with Ginter and Bartra, held Bayern’s stellar attack to only 1.0 expected goals and zero actual goals, giving Dortmund its first win over Bayern in the Bundesliga in 7 matches.

While the rest of Dortmund’s defenders were inconsistent over the rest of the month, Sokratis played well every chance he had. His absence was immediately noticeable in the Legia match. Even when Dortmund lost to Eintracht Frankfurt, Papa was without a doubt BVB’s best player. To quote our own twitter account:

Thanks for reading!