Bayern Munich’s Match Awards: The final totals

Bayern Munich had a very successful season in securing a domestic double despite how iffy things might have looked at times. One of the experiments we wanted to try this season was to create a rating system for the players to see if it would somewhat accurately assess how the players performed as individuals this season.

Perhaps there was some successes with this and maybe a few failures, but the list of scores we compiled seems to give us an idea of the players who excelled, the players who struggled, and everyone in between. There were absolutely a few anomalies where players did not receive enough credit, which we’ve called out below.

Give it a look and let us know how you think the system worked (this isn’t exactly a complicated algorithm) in the comments.

The objective

From the outset of the season, we wanted to track how the Bayern players rated from game to game and try to put a quantitative number to the results. The scoring scale went as follows:

• Meister of the Match: 4 points
• Standing Ovation: 3 points
• Golf Clap: 2 points
• Tip of the Cap: 1 point

In instances where players split the award, they would split the points (e.g. if Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery split the Standing Ovation, they each got 1.5 points).

I purposely tried not to do awards as much, so that there would not be any perceived outside influence to the standings. Because we had a multitude of writers work on them over the course of the season, the results should be considered pretty objective across the board (heck, even I gave Renato Sanches a “Meister of the Match” in one of the few Match Awards pieces that I did!).

The results

Not shockingly, Robert Lewandowski ran away with the title as the player with the most points (75). The next two players were Thomas Muller (59.5) and Thiago Alcantara (54), who both had excellent seasons.

Players who probably did not get enough credit

There were certainly many players whose value was not always capture by our Match Awards system, but here are a few that seemed to really stand out:

• David Alaba: Tallying only 14 points, it is safe to say that Alaba was the most underrated player of the season.
• Niklas Sule: Sule (18 points) was not exactly Mr. Consistency early in the campaign, but really settled in nicely and had a great season. Sule was likely one of the players we probably took for granted at times.

Bongarts/Getty Images

• Sven Ulreich: You know, for a back-up goalkeeper Ulreich did a fairly outstanding job when called upon this season and didn’t get any awards...at all. He was likely overshadowed by teammates during some of his better games, but he was definitely better than being shutout for the season like he was.

The complete list

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• Robert Lewandowski: 75
• Thomas Muller: 59.5
• Thiago Alcantara: 54
• Joshua Kimmich: 38
• Serge Gnabry: 38
• Kingsley Coman: 26
• James Rodriguez: 25.5
• Mats Hummels: 25
• Javi Martinez: 22
• Leon Goretzka: 22
• Niklas Sule: 18
• Manuel Neuer: 18
• Renato Sanches: 17
• Franck Ribery: 16.5
• David Alaba: 14
• Arjen Robben: 8.5
• Rafinha: 4
• Corentin Tolisso: 4
• Jerome Boateng: 3
• Sandro Wagner: 3
• Alphonso Davies: 1
• Sven Ulreich: 0
• Woo Yeong Jeong: 0