Download Aim Assist King
Christian Alradwan
Jadon Sancho ended the Bundesliga season as the league's top assister. He registered one more assist than Barcelona's Lionel Messi in 2018/19, but one less than Eden Hazard from Chelsea. Remarkably, he started the campaign as a substitute, but a handful of match-winning cameos in the first six games - providing assists off the bench against RB Leipzig, Eintracht Frankfurt, Nuremberg and Bayer Leverkusen - persuaded head coach Lucien Favre to make him a starter and he held down his place in the BVB throughout the season to play in every game for the club.
The only player to play every single second, minute and hour of Bayern Munich's title-winning campaign, it's still incredible that a defender can register such a huge amount of assists for his team. His crosses from open play and corners were lapped up all year lonh. The 24-year-old chimed in with a brace of assists against VfB Stuttgart on Matchday 19 and has been regularly adding to that tally ever since. He added to his tally with one very special assist on the final day, setting up Franck Ribery to score his final goal for Bayern.
Julian Brandt chimed in with five assists last season and only had three to his name at the halfway point in 2018/19, but the Leverkusen maestro has gone up a gear under Peter Bosz. He set up Lucas Alario in the Matchday 20 win over Bayern, before registering two goals and as many assists a week later against Mainz. He also turned provider against Dortmund, Hannover (a hat-trick of assists!), Hoffenheim and Nuremberg to claim 11 in the end.
Thorgan Hazard hadn't found the net at all in 2019 until Matchday 33, when he took his goal tally to 10 for the campaign in Gladbach's thumping 4-0 win over Nuremberg. He also notched his 10th assist of the season in that game, teeing up Denis Zakaria for the Foals' fourth.
The unsung hero of Frankfurt's top-four push, Filip Kostic and his trusty left foot kept the likes of Haller, Luka Jovic and Ante Rebic in business. The Serbian served up two of Frankfurt's seven goals in their demolition of Fortuna Düsseldorf on Matchday 8, and produced a steady steam of assists since then, including five in seven games between Matchdays 22 and 29 as he finished the season having played in every game.
Adductor and ankle injuries kept the 25-year-old out of action at the start of the season and he only made his first appearance as a substitute on Matchday 6. The left-footed midfielder took a while to find form, contributing two goals and as many assists before the winter break, before exploding in the second half of the campaign. A 2017 Confederations Cup winner with Germany, Demirbay has stated that he aims to return to Joachim Löw's squad and it is surely only a matter of time given his recent displays, notching two goals and six assists in 2019 - including in four consecutive games between Matchdays 28 and 32. He'll be a UEFA Champions League player with Leverkusen next season as well.
Sebastien Haller doesn't just take chances, he makes them, too. Frankfurt won six of the seven games in which the 14-goal Frenchman furnished an assist, with four coming in games against Hannover and Fortuna Düsseldorf during the first half of 2018/19. Due to injury problems, he only provided one after Matchday 15, however.
Max Kruse was at the heart of Bremen's best work in 2018/19. Only one of his eight assists came in a losing effort - and that was against Bayern on Matchday 13. The Werder captain made it successive assists as the Green-Whites bounced back to down Fortuna, and set up goals in wins against Mainz, Schalke, Bayer Leverkusen and Freiburg between Matchdays 26 and 29.
Thomas Müller assisted more goals than he's scored (six) in 2018/19. That's fairly typical for the self-title Raumdeuter, who had out-assisted his total strike rate in five of his previous nine full Bundesliga seasons. Only once - when he scored a career-high 20 league goals in 2015/16 - has he failed to reach double figures for assists. His seventh of the campaign fell against Dortmund on Matchday 28 and he teed up Serge Gnabry to score in Düsseldorf on Matchday 29.
A goalscorer by trade, the 26-year-old added assists to his repertoire in 2018/19, particularly since Peter Bosz took charge of the side for the second half of the campaign. He had only teed up goals for colleagues twice before the winter break, but has been laying them on regularly ever since, with Kai Havertz, Julian Brandt and Lucas Alario the main beneficiaries.
Reus enjoyed his finest season to date in a Dortmund shirt, his 17 goals and eight assists proving absolutely vital to BVB's battle with Bayern for a first Bundesliga title since 2012. He began the season with a goal and assist, and hand a hand in three of Dortmund's four goals, scoring one, in the Black-Yellows' Matchday 30 rout of Freiburg. He ended the season with a goal against former side Gladbach, but it wasn't enough for BVB to win the league.
Florian Neuhaus is the surprise name on the list, the 22-year-old Gladbach midfielder having only made his Bundesliga debut on Matchday 1 of 2018/19. He served up the first of his assists on that milestone afternoon against Leverkusen, and was averaging one every other game up to and including Matchday 14. He teed up Alassane Plea to score against Leipzig on Matchday 30, and in between times chipped in with three goals of his own.
In the end, Ozil, heralded as the new Dennis Bergkamp, ended up as peripheral as Barcelona loanee Denis Suarez. His groundbreaking contract morphed from a statement of intent for a club near the top to a crippling burden for a team in need of serious repair. Ozil became a diamond-encrusted outcast; a thick slice of Black Forest gateaux at a club on a diet.
Years of frugality due to the self-funded move from Highbury to Emirates Stadium rendered Arsenal unable to compete at the top end of the transfer market, especially one bloated by the billions of Manchester City, who followed Chelsea in fast-tracking their way to success through lavish spending. Arsenal's trophy drought dated back to 2005, weighing heavier on Wenger's shoulders with each passing year. But by landing Ozil, who agreed to the move on Sept. 2, 2013, Arsenal were finally competing. More than that, they were signing a bona fide star for Real Madrid and Germany -- a playmaker about to turn 25 years old, with the pedigree to add real potency to Wenger's aesthetic approach.
In a near-perfect distillation of the transition the Gunners were making, earlier that day they signed goalkeeper Emiliano Viviano on a season-long loan from Palermo, a deal more in keeping with a transfer window in which they also agreed terms with 20-year-old French striker Yaya Sanogo and re-signed midfielder Mathieu Flamini. But, with the clock ticking down to the deadline, Arsenal shattered their transfer record almost three times over to pay 42.4m for Ozil. He became the third-most expensive signing in British football.
In 2015-16, Ozil reached new heights, totalling 19 assists -- one short of the record held by Arsenal legend Thierry Henry (2002-03) and Man City's Kevin De Bruyne (2019-20). According to Opta, Ozil created 146 chances that season, 10 more than any other player has managed since the company started its records nearly 20 years ago. A stunning finish to win a Champions League group stage game against Ludogorets at the beginning of November ranks to this day as the best goal he scored for the club.
The Gunners signed Granit Xhaka, Shkodran Mustafi, Lucas Perez for around 86m in the summer of 2016. Ozil ended the 2016-17 season with nine Premier League goals and eight assists, but the Gunners finished outside the top four for the first time in Wenger's reign, dating back to 1996.
There were some memorable moments, particularly when wearing the captain's armband against Leicester on Oct. 22, 2018 -- a goal and assist barely did a magnificent overall display justice. However, he was used sparingly throughout the season, with Emery voicing concerns over his fitness and commitment. Criticism that Ozil failed to produce in the big games lingered, particularly after the 2019 Europa League final, when he was substituted for teenager Joe Willock with the Gunners losing 4-1 to Chelsea.
New arrival Mikel Arteta then started Ozil in his first 10 Premier League games as Gunners boss, albeit with modest returns. Ozil's public criticism of China's treatment of the Uighur Muslim population caused diplomatic issues for the club, but the importance of this in his marginalisation is overplayed given that he still stayed in the team. It was only in March 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, when he refused to join the majority of his teammates in taking a pay cut, that Ozil fell out of favour for good under Arteta.
The Spaniard has cited "football reasons" for leaving Ozil out, but whatever the shift in style of play, there have been many games when 20 minutes of Ozil would hardly have made the situation worse. Arteta was central to convincing the squad to take a reduction in wages at a time when their Premier League counterparts were discussing deferrals. He personally intervened to negotiate with players on behalf of the ownership, but Ozil wanted more assurances over where the money would go. That stance deepened the internal divisions because if Ozil's contract was a symbol of grander thinking, COVID-19 had accelerated Arsenal's shift back towards greater fiscal conservatism, making 55 non-playing staff redundant, reducing the scouting network and even dispensing with Sanllehi.
Sources told ESPN that it felt personal to Arteta that Ozil would not heed his call for unity in taking the cut, and any chance of a reconciliation between the two was gone. They did not speak much after that, exchanging simple pleasantries whenever their paths crossed at the training ground. Ozil continued to train alongside the first-team, giving out advice and sportswear from his M10 brand to several of the younger squad members.
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