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It happened again — someone not named Paulo Dybala won the MoTM award. It probably wouldn’t have been the player you’d first guess, but 20-year-old Rodrigo Bentancur took home the crown against Fiorentina.
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In his first Serie A start, the Uruguayan central midfielder shone as Allegri rolled out a pretty heavily rotated squad. Aside from his +188 vote total, he received a 7.32 match rating on WhoScored, was credited for 3 tackles, a dribble completed, and an 89% pass success rate. If Rodrigo can consistently put together performances like this one, then we have quite a special talent on our hands. He now moves into 5th in both the overall and Serie A J-Score leaderboard.
Next best was goal scorer Mario Mandzukic who ended up with +173 votes. He scored, and was generally good. Rounding off the top three was Blaise Matuidi with +161 votes. Special shoutout to Juan Cuadrado with +155 because there was a large drop-off after that, and it was a good performance in what has otherwise been a rough season for him.
At the bottom of the list were some Argentines. Gonzalo Higuain was a heavy leader in the downvotes category, with a total of -110. He was the only negative player, and he racked up over a hundred more downvotes than anyone else on the team. He now ranks 21st on the team for his Rating, or J-Score on the season.
Next worst was Paulo Dybala, who was only 2 upvotes above zero - another relatively weak performance in what could easily be considered a key game. Stephan Lichtsteiner received +5, or 2% of voters in his 4 minutes of action. This is what should probably be expected for a non-impact sub, a near-neutral score. This is why subs are included, the system works. If Licht had scored in his 4 minutes, he’d have gotten deserved upvotes. If he scored an own goal, he would have gotten deserved downvotes. The system is fine.
Wojciech Szczesny lost his spot on top of the overall leaderboard, even though he picked up a clean sheet. Moving into top spot was Claudio Marchisio by default having both Paulo Dybala and Szczesny fall lower than him. Dybala is only behind him by about 0.3% of votes, so he could easily creep back up in front. Dybala did move into the top of the Serie A portion of the leaderboard though.
To view the updated tables at any time, use this link: Google sheets. Thanks for voting, and follow me on twitter at @AnthonyTurgelis, I like when people listen to what I have to say.