Player of the season nominees: Stefan Kießling

With the season having ended, Sportskeeda decided to let its viewers rate the 30 best players of the season.

We will be shortlisting 30 of the best performers this term, and let you pick your winner.

What do you think? Have your say at the end of the article.

Kiessling celebrating scoring a goal

With their 1-0 away win against Hamburger on the last day of Bundesliga, Bayer Leverkusen ended a fantastic 2012/13 season in style. They finished 3rd in the league (just one point behind BVB who finished 2nd), which gives them automatic qualification to the group stages of the Champions League. One must admit, Hyypia has done a great job. Hyypia’s best player, his go to man was none other than Stefan Kießling, his team’s main striker.

After starting his senior professional career with Nuremberg, Kießling joined Leverkusen in 2006 and has since then scored 113 goals for the club in 293 Bundesliga appearances.

The 29 year old German scored 25 goals in 34 appearances in the Bundesliga this season, which is the most number goals scored by a player this season (Lewandowski finished 2nd in the list with 24 goals). He was only the second Leverkusen player in the history to do so. And his tally of 25 goals is a new club record for most number goals by an individual in a season. He also provided seven assists along the way. The best thing about his season was that his goals were evenly distributed throughout the season. His 25 goals and seven assists were distributed over 23 games, out of which 16 were won by Bayer and 3 draws, that shows how crucial he was for the team. When he performed well, the team performed well.

His strengths lie in clinical finishing and heading. Standing at 6’2″, he’s a beast in the air, a nightmare for opposition centre backs. He averages 5.4 aerial duels won per game, which is the 6th best in entire Europe and the best in Germany. That makes him a huge threat at set pieces. He is the team’s focal point in attack. He has completed 117 layoffs for his team mates this season. Despite his height, he is pretty mobile for an out-and-out striker, that prevents him from being one dimensional and he’s well capable of playing on the flanks. He has good enough pace and is a decent enough dribbler.

He developed a deadly partnership with Schurrle who played on the left of a 4-3-3, exchanging positions, passes and terrorising the opposition defenders. In between them they scored 38 goals and assisted 15 this season. Unlike many other strikers, Stefan works very hard off the ball. Generally, one can find him all over the pitch. He averages 10.9 kilometers covered per game.

Some of his best performances this season came in both wins over Fortuna, 3-0 home win over Hamburger, 2-1 home win against Augsburg, 5-0 home win over Hoffenheim. But if I had to choose just one, then it’d be his 83 minute dream performance against Hamburger. He had scored 2, both from the centre of the box one into the right corner and one into the centre of the goal. He had also assisted one for Schurrle, that night. 52 touches on the ball, 10 aerial duels won, 36 passes, 4 long balls attempted and all successful, 2 key passes, 1 assist, 3 shots, 2 on target, 2 goals. One of the best all round performances of the season.

Looking back at the just completed season, one has to agree Kießling is amongst the top 30 players of the season.

With him approaching the 30s, this could well be the last chance for him to move to a “big” club. As for getting chances in the national team is concerned, he’s very unlucky. Veteran Klose and Gomez are Jogi Low’s preferred strikers, Kießling only third choice. One must be wondering, what else can he do to get into the team.