Burkinabe's Edmond Tapsoba outshines Ujah in DFB Pokal

Edmond Tapsoba continued his meiotic rise since joining Bayer Leverkusen from Portugal’s Vitoria Guimaraes in the recent transfer window with another fine performance for Leverkusen as they eliminated Anthony Ujah's Union Berlin from the DFB Pokal on Wednesday.

Both Tapsoba and Ujah started but it was the former who came out tops as Leverkusen walked out 3-1 victors.

Prior to his switch to Germany, Tapsoba had been the said transfer target of Premier League side Leicester City who were impressed by the Ouagadougou native's displays against Arsenal in the Europa League.

Five days after his arrival at Die Werkself the 21-year-old was already drawn into Leverkusen’s matchday squad as he sat on the bench in the 2-1 win against Stuttgart on the 5th of February.

Three days later he was thrown in the deep end and drafted into the starting line-up for his Bundesliga debut by Peter Bosz and it was there where the world got to know him as he shut out Borussia Dortmund's teenage sensation, striker Erling Haaland.

Martin Rose

Prior to the clash against Tapsoba, Halaand had made a meal of the defenders he had come up against in the German top-tier, netting- seven goals- in all three of his first three Bundesliga outings.

But against the Burkinabe international, Halaand was brought to a standstill as Leverkusen came-from-behind to beat Borussia Dortmund 4-3 in a thrilling encounter at the BayArena.

He quickly followed that performance with another composed outing in an equally dramatic 3-2 victory against Union Berlin to make it two from two and has never looked back since then as he has now appeared and completed the entire match in all seven of Leverkusen's most recent games.

Other than his magnificent defensive prowess, Tapsoba - who has already been compared to Jerome Boateng in Germany- has proven to be useful with the ball at his feet too as he recorded the most touches (106) against Berlin and completed more passes than anyone else (74 and 78) against both Dortmund and Union.