With Ewa Pajor, Nikola Karczewska and Sophie Weidauer, three players are jointly at the top of the goalscoring list. They have each scored once so far. Two of them are playing against each other this week.
Wolfsburg’s Ewa Pajor is already playing her ninth Bundesliga season; she moved to VfL at the age of 18 in the summer of 2015. Poland’s national striker has been one of the best strikers in the world for years. This is also why it was said last fall that Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester United were both interested in making her the most expensive transfer in women’s football.
However, that doesn’t interest her and she feels very comfortable at VfL, Pajor told the Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung in November. The 27-year-old has been slowed down by long-term injuries in recent years. At the end of March 2022 she celebrated her comeback after the second knee operation of her career. Since then, she has scored 39 goals and 15 assists in 57 games for Wolfsburg across all competitions.
Pajor’s goal-scoring threat comes from her outstanding timing, outrunning her defenders even when her opponents may be a little quicker than her. If she plays centrally, Pajor lures her opponents in one direction with her running path and then hits a catch.
This season, however, Wolfsburg coach Tommy Stroot is primarily using her on the left wing rather than as a central striker. From there she often moves inwards and can then shoot with her right foot. Only Alexandra Popp shoots on goal more often per game than Pajor (according to Opta, around 3.98 times per 90 minutes played). Timing and good positioning are also the reason why Pajor, who is only 1.67m tall, regularly scores with her head even against taller defenders.
Pajor and Karczewska know each other from Poland’s national team
In terms of size, Nikola Karczewska is a completely different house number. The 1.83m tall Leverkusen player and Pajor know each other very well from Poland’s national team and will play against each other this weekend when the Wolfsburg women play at Bayer on Sunday (kick-off 2 p.m.). The two were rarely on the pitch together in the Polish national team; 24-year-old Karczewska is usually one of the substitutes for Pajor. However, your last national team appearance was a while ago.
After moving from the Polish Ekstraliga, Karczewska is still looking for her new footballing home. With Górnik Łęczna she became Polish champion and cup winner in 2019/20, and the following year she scored 23 goals in 22 games. This was followed by a move to FC Fleury 91 in France (21 appearances, 10 goals) for the 2021/22 season and after just one year he moved on to Tottenham Hotspur.
From there, Karczewska is on loan to Bayer Leverkusen until the end of the season after the season in England was less successful. Especially after England international striker Beth England was added in the winter of the 2022/23 season.
Leverkusen’s Nikola Karczewska scored 1-0 against Werder.
Karczewska: Efficient Penalty area striker
Despite her height, Karczewska is not a classic header player. She prefers to score goals with her right foot. This is not so relevant for Leverkusen because under Robert de Pauw there is less emphasis on high crosses and more on switching sides with subsequent flat passes or dribbling into the penalty area.
De Pauw uses his new striker as a central striker, occasionally as part of a double striker, but she always moves to the wings and offers herself as a passing station. However, Karczewska is less involved in the game structure than Pajor in Wolfsburg.
The Leverkusen team is currently not always able to use Karczewska well in the penalty area, which is why she only has around 1.36 shots on goal per 90 minutes played. In addition, they have significantly exceeded their expected goals value (0.42) so far (0.74 goals per 90 minutes played). This is also a sign that Leverkusen are not putting them in good shooting positions often enough and are doing a lot with very little. To put it positively, she needs the fewest shots to score a goal out of the three strikers described this season.
Sophie Weidauer: From the Erzgebirge to the Weser
Karczewska and Sophie Weidauer have one thing in common: both have already scored a hat-trick this season. For the Leverkusen team it was already on the second matchday against Nuremberg. Werder Bremen’s new signing Sophie Weidauer scored three times against the other newcomers from Leipzig on matchday 7.
The soon-to-be 22-year-old comes from Stollberg in the Erzgebirge and learned to play football in the region before joining the Turbine Potsdam youth team at the age of twelve from SV Tanne Thalheim and FC Erzgebirge Aue. The 2019 U17 European champion also celebrated her Bundesliga debut with the Turbine and has already made 92 appearances in the league. In 2022 she was also awarded the Silver Fritz Walter Medal.
Weidauer was at times in midfield for Potsdam, but under Thomas Horsch at Werder Bremen the trained striker is again playing in her favorite position as part of a dual leadership team. Statistically, she moves between Pajor and Karczewska: she shoots on goal around 2.5 times per 90 minutes played and does not exceed her expected goals value (0.41) by quite as much (0.58 goals per 90 minutes played).
With her goals, she has played a significant role in the fact that Bremen’s offense has improved so much compared to previous seasons: after the first half of the season there were 20 goals, last year 16 goals after the entire season. With her clever runs and passes in the build-up game, it seems only a matter of time before Weidauer draws international attention.