NEW YORK(Tuesday, September 6, 2022) – Nashville SC midfielder Hany Mukhtar was voted the Major League Soccer Player of the Week presented by Continental Tire for the 29th week of the 2022 MLS season.
Mukhtar earned his second-straight MLS Player of the Week presented by Continental Tire honors after recording a brace in Nashville’s 3-0 victory over Austin FC on Saturday, September 3. Mukhtar has now scored five goals in his last two games and leads the league with 21 goals on the season. His 32 goal contributions (21 goals, 11 assists) are also the most in MLS and five more than the next-closest player (Austin FC’s Sebastián Driussi, 27). Mukhtar’s 32 goal contributions are already tied for the eighth most in a single season in league history. Additionally, the German midfielder has at least one goal contribution in 12 of his last 13 matches and multiple contributions in six of those.
With Nashville leading 1-0 in the 82nd minute, Mukhtar scored his first goal of the match when Alex Muyl played the ball into his path, and he buried a thunderous effort from a tight angle into the side-netting (Watch Here). The 2022 Landon Donovan MLS MVP candidate completed his brace in the first minute of stoppage time after Shaq Moore hit a low-driven pass to the open Mukhtar, who placed the ball past the diving Austin goalkeeper from short range for a 3-0 advantage ( Watch Here).
Since the start of 2021, Mukhtar’s 37 goals lead all MLS players and his 23 assists rank as the third most behind the New England Revolution’s Carles Gil (31) and FC Cincinnati’s Luciano Acosta (26). The midfielder is the first player to produce at least 60 goal contributions in a two-year span since LAFC’s Carlos Vela (76) and the LA Galaxy’s Zlatan Ibrahimović (79) from 2018-19. His 60 goal contributions since the beginning of last season are 18 more than the next-closest player (Valentín Castellanos, 42). Of Nashville’s 103 goals over the past two seasons, the German has scored or assisted on 58.3 percent of those.
Mukhtar is the first player to win MLS Player of the Week presented by Continental Tire in consecutive weeks since Raúl Ruidíaz for Seattle Sounders FC in Weeks 19-20 of 2021. Since the start of 2016, he joins Ruidíaz, Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernández, Vela, and Miguel Almirón as the only players to accomplish this feat. He is the lone player in MLS this season to earn the honor on three separate occasions. Mukhtar’s six Player of the Week awards since the start of 2020 are the most in MLS. Additionally, his six wins are tied for the third-most among active MLS players, behind Vela (eight) and Atlanta United FC’s Josef Martínez (seven).
Nashville will look to win five-consecutive games for the first time in club history when they host the LA Galaxy at GEODIS Park on Saturday, September 10 (3:30 p.m. ET, Univision / Twitter/ TUDN).
The MLS Player of the Week presented by Continental Tire is selected each week of the regular season through both media and fan voting in a process conducted by MLS Communications. A panel of journalists from the North American Soccer Reporters (NASR) comprises 75 percent of the vote, while a Twitter fan vote represents the remaining 25 percent of voting. NASR consists of members of print, television, radio, and online media.
COURTESY MLS COMMUNICATIONS
