BFW Postseason Awards: Final ranking of EVERY Bayern Munich player in 2019/20

The longest season in history is finally over, and Bayern Munich have been crowned winners of the coveted treble. Even the most optimistic fan couldn’t have predicted how things would turn out, because unlike 2012/13, there was really no warning that an achievement of this scale was about to happen. We missed our star signing (Leroy Sané), had to make do with two stopgap loans (Coutinho and Ivan Perisic), and there were reports of tension between the coach, Niko Kovac, and players.

Of course, that’s all in the past. We can save the reminiscing for later, because the point of this article is to look at how every member of the squad performed. And I mean EVERY member — even our dear Quadriozola.

After every game, us folks at BFW hand out four “match awards” — the Tip of the Cap, the Golf Clap, the Standing Ovation, and the Meister of the Match. These four awards are given to the top four players from the game in the author’s opinion. By assigning a points value to each award, we get our final ranking for the season. Here’s the methodology used:

Tip of the Cap: 1 point (0.5 shared)
Golf Clap: 2 points (1.5 shared)
Standing Ovation: 3 points (2.5 shared)
Meister of the Match: 4 points (3.5 shared)

In addition, points were doubled for the Champions League final. This is the only game that had any kind of multiplier this season, which is something we might change in upcoming years. Anyway, without further delay, here is the final points tally for 2019/20:

[Editor: for technical reasons, Álvaro Odriozola fell off the bottom of the list. Gone, but not forgotten.]

Takeaways:

• Robert Lewandowski is (naturally) the MVP of the season, being almost 20 points clear of the next best player. He was in a class of his own this year.
• Thomas Müller once again comes second, just like in the 18/19 season. He also dominated the table in his own way, being more than 15 points clear of the next-best player. In my view, this is a better representation of how important Müller is to the team, since most statistical models don’t rate him nearly as high. Whoscored’s method, for example, puts him at 5th. Fascinatingly, he had only 2 MotM awards in the entire season, so his points tally is based on consistent appearances in the awards rather than a few big games like others on the list.
• Serge Gnabry and Joshua Kimmich share the number three spot, and they wholly deserve it. Both of them were clutch in the knockout round of the Champions League, and played a massive part in Bayern’s winning the treble. We’re so lucky to have a pair of great youngsters with the skill and mentality that these two have.
• Thiago Alcantara REALLY improved in the second half of the season. In the first half, he was languishing at 9th place with just 14 points. His 31 points earned since then makes him Bayern’s third-best performer since the Rückrunde, behind only Lewandowski and Muller. Shame how the Spaniard wants to leave.
• Our writers were finally shamed into giving David Alaba points. He got 18.5 points in the second half, compared to the measly 1 point in the first half of the season.
• Alphonso Davies arguably wasn’t as prevalent in the match awards of the second half, which probably comes from being graded more like “just another player” rather than getting the “rookie bonus”. It says something about the kid that he made himself at home on the lineup at such a young age.
• Regardless, the match awards system is still undoubtedly biased towards offensive contributions. We should take a look at that for the upcoming season. How do you think we can improve this system? Comment below.