The 16th matchday of the Bundesliga will go down as another fruitful one for Bayern Munich. With Borussia Dortmund, Schalke and Bayer Leverkusen all losing, the Bavarians pulled further away from their rivals, and now boast an 11-point lead at the top of the Bundesliga.
In the final fixture before Christmas, they face Borussia Monchengladbach at home, and will be hopeful of securing yet another victory. And, unsurprisingly, two of their recent stars feature in Goal.com‘s best XI of the week.
In goal, we have Austria international Fabian Giefer, who may have conceded twice as Nurnberg ran out 2-0 winners over Fortuna Dusseldorf, but still made a number of key saves to make his third appearance of the season in our team of the week.
The back three is manned by three players from three different teams. Alvaro Dominguez helped Borussia Monchengladbach to a rare clean sheet against Mainz, while Naldo helped limit Dortmund’s all-star attack to two goals against Wolfsburg. Finally, we have Dante, who continued his excellent run of form with another brilliant performance for Bayern.
On the right-hand side of midfield, we have Markus Feulner, who returned from suspension to score one and set up another for Nurnberg, while two playmakers, Diego and Szabolcs Huszti, line up in the centre of the park thanks to their exploits for Wolfsburg and Hannover respectively. Finally, we have regular star Franck Ribery, who makes his ninth appearance of the season after another great showing for Bayern.
Up front, we have three goalscoring heroes. Artjoms Rudnevs found the net twice for Hamburg on Friday, Vedad Ibisevic scored a hat-trick for Stuttgart in their 3-1 demolition of Schalke, and Bas Dost scored the winner for Wolfsburg at the Westfalenstadion.