Real Madrid, Manchester City and Zenit St. Petersburg were among the first teams to book their place in the next round of the Champions League in midweek, but were any of their players good enough to make the Team of the Week?
Unsurprisingly, Bayern Munich’s 5-1 thrashing of Arsenal means they have the largest contingent of players in the XI (3). The tournament’s most prolific creator, Thiago, joins goalscorers Thomas Muller and David Alaba in the starting line up. No player has registered more assists than Thiago (4) in this season’s edition of the Champions League and the Spaniard is now the highest rated player (9.05).
However, despite misplacing just 12 of his 125 passes, creating more chances of any player (4) and also completing at least five more tackles and interceptions than anyone else (12), Thiago was not the highest rated player for the week (9.68).
Instead, that honour was left to his former Barcelona teammate, Neymar. The Brazil international’s performances continue to go from strength to strength in the absence of Lionel Messi and the same was true of his display in their 3-0 win over BATE Borisov on Wednesday night.
In fact, Neymar and Luis Suarez have scored 15 of Barcelona’s last 17 goals and Neymar has had a direct hand in 14 of Barca’s last 16 goals in all competitions.
Against BATE everything went through Neymar. The 23-year-old had more touches than any other player (118) and completed as many dribbles as the entire BATE side combined (8). The Barca No.11 also created at least two more chances than any other player (6) and tested Sergei Chernik in BATE’s goal with four of his seven shots on target to garner a perfect 10 WhoScored rating.
For more stats on Neymar, click here to visit his WhoScored player page
