Vote for the Bundesliga's Player of the Month for October 2024

The Player of the Month award was created by the DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga in 2018/19, in cooperation with the Bundesliga's official licensing partner, EA Sports. 

The award is decided through a two-stage selection process that considers both the players' individual performance data and a vote by fans and experts.

This month, the selections were made based on performances from Matchdays 6, 7 and 8.

The nominees

Willi Orbán (RB Leipzig)

RB Leipzig are hot on the heels of Bundesliga leaders FC Bayern München, yet while Vincent Kompany’s side have garnered headlines for their goalscoring prowess, it is at the other end of the pitch that Leipzig have excelled. Marco Rose’s side have conceded a league-low five goals after nine matchdays, with SC Freiburg the only team to score against them in all of October, taking the team’s clean-sheet tally to six. Much of that is down to team captain and defensive rock Willi Orbán, who did not miss a minute of Bundesliga action throughout the month. 

“Willi is only human, but he’s very close to being a machine,” said Rose after the Freiburg game of the 31-year-old, who maintains his fitness thanks to a specially tailored sleep and nutrition regime. Leipzig initially struggled against a strong Freiburg side, but Orbán’s equaliser turned the tide and set the course for a 3-1 victory. That was the centre-back’s second goal of the season; his first also arrived in October, while he scored in back-to-back Bundesliga games for the first time in his lengthy career.

Despite his impact in the final third, the Hungary international has not forgotten how to do his day job. He won 76 percent of all his duels in October, the second-best quota in the division after FC St. Pauli’s Eric Smith. Rose may have been joking about his captain being a machine, but on October’s evidence he was not too far from the truth.

Watch: Willi Orbán nominated for October Player of the Month