5 best players in Europe's Top 5 leagues this season

#3 Bundesliga - James Rodriguez (Bayern Munich)

Celtic FC v Bayern Muenchen - UEFA Champions League — Rodriguez has been tearing it up in the Bundesliga

Surprised? You shouldn't be, i.e, if you've been watching how the Bayern machine has been ticking thanks to the Colombian's malicious mischief. First of all, let me just give a shout-out to the man simply for how joyous it is watching him play.

Rodriguez was loaned out to Bayern by Zidane after deeming him surplus to requirements at the Bernabeu (promise to not laugh). After struggling a bit initially, Rodriguez has really come to his own and has been consistently shelling out top performances for Heynckes' well-drilled unit.

Immensely complemented by Arturo Vidal in midfield, the Colombian sensation has been hailed as 'God-sent' by his gaffer. At Bayern, Rodriguez is getting the amount of game time a player of his calibre truly deserves.

His delightful lobbed ball that cut through the Schalke defence like a knife through butter to set up Arturo Vidal for Bayern's 3rd goal of the night has been playing on repeat on my laptop.

While his numbers may not be as staggering as the ones that we've dealt with so far in this slideshow, you cannot understate James Rodriguez's impact for the Bavarians.

The attacking midfielder has scored 4 goals and assisted a further 6 in his 15 appearances (12 starts and 3 off the bench). On top of that, Rodriguez's game is enabled by the outstanding precision he brings to the field as evidenced by a pass success rate of 90% and has also created 39 chances in the league so far.

According to Whoscored.com, James Rodriguez leads the list in term of average ratings with a rating of 7.67 which is greater than any of his teammates- more than Thomas Muller and Robert Lewandowski who have been involved in more goals than the Colombian.

Zinedine Zidane could very well be a man filled with regret at this point in time and why wouldn't he be given how Madrid have been struggling since James Rodriguez's departure?

Here's an indicator of just how good he has been so far:

About the author

Shambhu is a European and international football journalist at Sportskeeda who focuses on previews, listicles and news articles. An ardent Manchester United supporter since before his teenage years, he started following the Red Devils by age 10 watching MUTV on television. Shambhu is also a highly-revered rapper and a playback singer on Spotify, having a whopping 1 million monthly listeners.

For his articles, Shambhu believes in triple-checking every piece of information, relying on trusted websites like Transfermarkt and Opta, and staying away from speculative publications. He believes that his law degree helped him to be more articulate and meticulous with his content and one of his core strengths is seamlessly involving emotion in his write-ups owing to the love for the sport. For Sportskeeda, has done exclusive interviews with Spanish legends Gaizka Mendieta and Fernando Morientes so far, and his articles boast of a huge readership of close to 50 million.

Shambhu's favorite footballer is Lionel Messi, and the Argentine attaining glory in 2022 is his favorite FIFA World Cup moment. He believes only Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland could replicate Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo's rivalry in the years to come. His favorite manager is Sir Alex Ferguson due to the Scot's unmatched longevity at the top.

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Edited by Ashwin Hanagudu