Donyell Malen

The 25-year-old striker has been under contract with Borussia Dortmund since July 2021. Until June 2024 (reference date for all stats), the Dutch international played 111 games (34 goals / 19 assists) for BVB.

Donyell Malen was born on 19 January 1999 in Wieringen (North Holland) as the son of a Dutch mother and a Surinamese father, a former professional footballer. At the age five, he joined his first club. When he was nine years old, he joined the Ajax academy, where he played with senior international stars Matthias de Ligt and Justin Kluivert and was trained by former world-class player Dennis Bergkamp. To make that happen, his mother Mariska took a lot on, driving her son almost daily to Amsterdam – 40 kilometres there, 40 kilometres back – so that he could train in the youth academy.

In the U17s team, Malen made the jump to England and the Arsenal academy. After scoring 44 goals in England in two years, he was on the verge of breaking into the first team squad, but shortly before the start of the 2017/18 season, he headed back from London to his home country and accepted an offer from PSV Eindhoven. One day before his 19th birthday, he made his debut in the Eredivisie under coach Mark von Bommel on 14 September 2019 and managed the feat of scoring all five goals for his team in the 5-0 win over Vitesse Arnhem. In 2020/21, he was involved in 37 goals (27 goals, 10 assists) for PSV Eindhoven in 45 competitive games.

Under Roger Schmidt, Malen developed into a Dutch shooting star in Eindhoven, alongside none other than Mario Götze, who strongly advised him to accept the offer when it came in from Dortmund. But the Bundesliga is not the Eredivisie. Donyell Malen needed his time, and BVB gave it to him. In his first season in Dortmund, Malen scored nine goals across all competitions, the first being the winner in a 1-0 victory against Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League. Sebastian Kehl: "Donny just needed his time to settle in Germany and get used to the intensity of the Bundesliga. But in training, we could see from the beginning the quality he can deliver on the pitch."

In his second season in Black & Yellow, Malen really got going. It was in large part thanks to his dramatic upturn in performances that Borussia were able to dream of winning the league right up until the final game of the season. The German Football League voted him Player of the Month of April 2023, after he bagged five goals within four weeks against Bayern Munich, Union Berlin, VfB Stuttgart and Eintracht Frankfurt.

"I came to a new country and a new team in the summer of 2021, so I had to get used to that first. A lot has happened, I have learned a lot and I have also matured as a person," he told the members' magazine "Borussia" (September 2023 issue) and revealed: "It was crucial for me that my son was born last March. That gave me a special kick. Since then, I have gone on a run and I'm scoring regularly." Donyell Malen scored each of his nine goals in the 2022/23 season after Matchday 20. Those nine goals in the second half of the season were also joint-most in the Bundesliga. League-wide, no player was involved in more goals after the winter break than the Dutchman (13).

Although injuries restricted him to just 21 starts out of the 34 Bundesliga matches in the 2023/24 season that followed his break-out year, he still managed scored 13 goals (more than anyone else for BVB). Malen has bags of pace (reaching a peak of 35.1 km/h) and a good right-footed shot. He scored four times from counter-attacks in the Bundesliga last season – only Hoffenheim's Maximilian Beier and Leipzig's Lois Openda managed to better that tally by one in the league.

After having played for all Dutch youth teams since the U15s and having reached the European Championship finals with the U17s in 2016, Donyell Malen made his debut for the senior national team on 6 September 2019 in the 4-2 victory over Germany. He played about half of his international matches as a central striker and the other half on the two wings. At Euro 2024, he scored twice against Romania in the round of 16.