On Thursday, Thorsten Kirschbaum was named by the Eredivisie as Player of the Month. The keeper from VVV-Venlo put in the best performance in February, according to the statistics. sc Heerenveen mid-fielder Joey Veerman was named as Player of the Month U21.
Thorsten Kirschbaum is putting in a great performance with VVV-Venlo. The club from Venlo is unbeaten in seven matches, has risen from seventeenth to thirteenth place and has let in just four goals in the process. In February, they won against Heracles Almelo (1-0) and FC Groningen (0-1), while sc Heerenveen (1-1) and Fortuna Sittard (0-0) were held to a drawer.
The team from trainer Hans de Koning closed the last three matches with a clean-sheet; the last time that a Venlo keeper held his goal for three Eredivisie duels in a row was September 1993.
In four matches, Kirschbaum let in just one goal and the 32-year old German saved 19 out of 20 shots. With 95%, the keeper has the highest saving percentage of all goalkeeper’s in February.
Kirschbaum is also the first goalkeeper to win Player of the Month. After Patrick Joosten, (Player of the Month January 2019), he is just the second player from VVV-Venlo to have won the prize.
In the ranking, Kirschbaum managed to hold both Steven Berghuis (Feyenoord) and Janis Blaswich (Heracles Almelo) behind him.
The Player of the Month award is an initiative of Eredivisie CV in collaboration with FOX Sports (media partner) and Opta Sports (official match data supplier). The scores are assigned to players objectively on the basis of more than 60 different statistics. Only players who have played at least two-thirds of the total number of game minutes are eligible for a prize. The prize for U21 Player of the Month is only awarded to players who are 21 or younger at the start of the competition.
