August 2026 saw the return of club football as we saw the major leagues around Europe get up and running late on in the month, and with less than a handful of games underway, we’ve seen some huge performances from the likes of Raphina, Michael Olise and other key stars across the leagues. Our POTM to start the season however is a player who is reborn at his new club after his loan turned permanent in the summer, and he has led his side to back-to-back 4-0 wins with 5 goals in 2 games.

Donyell Malen has completely revitalised his career after a fairly underwhelming year at Aston Villa which despite getting a respectful return of goals and performances, his loan spell at the end of the last season in Rome has been followed up with 2 huge showings to start the Serie A season in perfect form, scoring 5 of his teams 8 goals and zero conceded to lead the very early Serie A race.

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Match By Match

August 24th: Roma 4-0 Fiorentina – Starting the season at home to Fiorentina, it took Malen 27 minutes to open the scoring, and he added goals 2 and 3 in the 52nd and 60th minute before his teammate Pisilli added the 4th in the 86th minute. With a hat-trick to start the season, it couldn’t have gone any better for Malen and Roma as the link-up between him and Dybala is looking a huge threat this season. In his 68 minutes on the pitch, he bagged the 3 goals, had the most touches in the opposition box (12), took the most shots (5) and completed the most dribbles (3), earning a near perfect 9.7/10 FotMob rating.

August 31st: Lecce 0-4 Roma – With a near perfect start, Roma went and did it again away to Lecce just 1 week later, with Malen only managing 2 of the 4 goals, but still yet to concede and looking really up for this campaign. It took just 4 minutes for Malen to open the scoring, and 25 minutes for his 2nd as he made it 3-0 and put the game out of reach. Although he again managed only 67 minutes on the pitch, his work was done early with his 5 goals from 2 appearances, while also managing the most touches in the opposition box (11) and producing the most shots (5) earning another impressive 9.10/FotMob rating.