Over the last couple of weeks, Robert Lewandowski’s brilliance at Bayern Munich has not only reduced Pep Guardiola to a giggling schoolboy on the sidelines but has also served to remind us of the value of having a genuine striker. The centre-forward has hit 12 goals in his last four games, including the absurdity of five in nine minutes against Wolfsburg and a Champions League hat-trick. Lewandowski is one of Europe’s in-form players and probably the world’s in-form striker.
His club, Bayern Munich, have provided the nucleus of recent Germany squads and how Joachim Löw would love to have Lewandowski leading the line of his team to add a further cutting edge to his well-oiled machine – especially as Miroslav Klose, also born in Poland, has called time on his international career. What Löw and Germany do have, is Thomas Müller.
Much like his Polish team-mate at the Allianz Arena, Müller is a man in form. Ten goals in 11 games for Bayern this season and three in two for Germany have demonstrated why the Bayern bosses dismissed interest from Louis van Gaal in the summer. Müller is currently irreplaceable and irresistible – a standout performer who has, in his unassuming manner, begun effortlessly filling the shoes of Klose, Germany’s all-time record goalscorer. Müller, though, is not a striker – a fact that seems to bother neither him nor Löw.
After all, football has long since broken free of the constraints of defence, midfield and attack and is loathed to be so compartmentalised. The very mention of 4-4-2 is associated with a bygone age of strike partnerships and clean-shaven managers. Perhaps it is time for FourFourTwo magazine to undergo a rebranding?
The term striker is rarely used, as the role it implies is too simple, too two dimensional – a professional goalhanger. Forwards, as they should be labeled, need to deep-lying, false, inverted, withdrawn, or otherwise. They have to be able to perform a number differing roles, some of which only the tactically astute may be privy to. They are certainly not strikers.
That said, somebody has to wear the No9 shirt. And although shirt numbers that run from one to 11 are also a thing of the past, No9 is still often carried on the back of one of the team’s main goal scorers. At Bayern, it is Lewandowski.
Germany have fielded some great strikers in the past. The most recent, Klose (who preferred No11), ended the last World Cup as the competition’s top scorer outright, with 16 goals. As well as this record, Klose – who retired from international football after the tournament at the age of 36 – scored 71 international goals. That is three more than Gerd Müller, and streets ahead of the country’s other legendary forwards such as Jürgen Klinsmann, Uwe Seeler, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Rudi Völler. It’s quite a list but where are the contemporary strikers, and does Germany really need them?
Back to Müller, the Bayern forward is an extraordinary player who is capable and seemingly addicted to scoring weird and wonderful goals – scrappy goals, with his shoulder, face and knee. Müller is a hard player to label with a position; he just plays. He generally attacks from the right, an inside forward, a deep-lying poacher maybe, and one with an eye for goal. Since becoming the world’s worst-kept secret after South Africa 2010, Müller has gone from strength to strength, hoovering up titles with Bayern Munich and emerging as a key player for the national team. Having recently turned 26, he already has 30 international goals from 65 caps (a better record than Lewandowski), and with 10 World Cup goals to his name could be on course to overtake Klose’s record. Like Klose, he also does not wear the No9 shirt, instead opting for 13 – the same as his namesake, Gerd Müller.
His team-mate for club and country, Mario Götze, another immensely talented player, is another of Löw’s go-to-guys for the sharp end of the pitch. The scorer of the decisive goal in Rio last summer is an effortlessly elegant dribbler, passer and finisher – but one who is arguably more effective playing behind, or dovetailing with a striker such as Robert Lewandowski – as he did to great effect under Jürgen Klopp at Dortmund, and now more rarely under Guardiola at Bayern.
But who is Müller to buzz around, and Götze to play off? Outside of these two, Löw has slim pickings. Other forwards named in recent squads include Kevin Volland of Hoffenheim, who is perhaps more direct than Götze but not as clinical as Müller, and Max Kruse, arguably the most limited of the quartet and so far not really among the goals at Wolfsburg. The fact is, Germany do not seem to have – or want to employ – a traditional striker.
Klose’s main understudy for many years, and prolific Bundesliga goalscorer, was Mario Gómez, a classic centre-forward, a Mittelsturmer. Despite scoring 138 goals in 236 appearances for VfB Stuttgart and Bayern Munich – including 26 in 44 Champions League games – Gómez never really seemed able to carry the weight on his shoulders. Since leaving for Fiorentina in 2013 he has drifted out of the footballing consciousness slightly. He is only 30 years old and has 25 international goals from 59 caps, an impressive goals-to-game ratio for any striker, but it would be a surprise to see him heavily involved in the national team again, especially since as he has been shipped out to Besiktas on loan. The game – or the game that Löw and the DFB want to play – seems to have left the traditional striker behind.
A similar fate looks to have befallen Lukas Podolski. He may not have set the Premier League alight with Arsenal, and will certainly not live too long in the memory of most Internazionale fans, but the forward with the big smile and rocket left foot has had an outstanding international career to date. Over 11 years, Podolski has pulled on the national jersey 126 times, scoring 48 times in the process. He is fourth on Germany’s list of all-time goalscorers, in front of Klinsmann, Völler and Seeler.
Whereas Gómez’s injuries and missed opportunities have ostracised him from the national team, Podolski has suffered on two accounts. Firstly, his star has gradually faded since his Arsenal career began to stutter and he also finds himself, alongside Gómez, searching for goals Turkey’s Süper Lig, with Galatasaray. And although he remains a mainstay in the German squad, he is no longer a key component, with Löw instead entrusting more tactically flexible players. Even in the face of injuries to both Klose and Gomez in the past, Löw seemed reluctant to start Podolski.
There is no reason for Germany to be too worried. Müller and Götze are doing the business and Spain won the Euro 2012 final 4-0 without picking a striker in their starting team. Changes in tactics are often brought about by necessity – either due to a lack of talent in one area or an embarrassment of riches in another. And what Germany does have is an abundance of number 10s, inside forwards, and other forward-thinking midfielders, such as İlkay Gündoğan, Julian Draxler, Mesut Özil, André Schürrle, Karim Bellarabi, as well as younger talents in the Bundesliga such as Timo Werner, Max Meyer, Maximilian Arnold and Julian Brandt, to name a few.
No trainer would overlook a prolific striker. Lewandowski showed us in nine minutes – and Sergio Agüero in 20 – just how important a world class Mittelstürmer can be, and why those who are still around are so highly coveted. But before Löw and his eventual successor scour the country for the next Klose, and before they parachute more bread-and-butter strikers such as Stefan Kiessling, Pierre-Michel Lasogga or Alexander Meier into the squad, they will probably stick to eking the best from their talented options in other areas.
A glance around world football reveals the shortage of traditional strikers, or rather their waning status. Fewer national teams employ a striker and most of the best do not. Increasingly, teams’ match-winners are playing slightly further back: Lionel Messi, Eden Hazard, Müller, James Rodríguez, Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo, Alexis Sánchez, Gareth Bale, Luis Suárez and so on. Of course, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Edinson Cavani, Radamel Falcao, Robin van Persie and others are still around, but they don’t always carry the same weight or influence as they used to, Zlatan aside maybe. The result is that kids in playgrounds and parks around the world have been slowly moving further back, vacating the opposition penalty area, instead choosing to ghost into space and celebrate assists and goals of individual brilliance, rather than the hunt for tap-ins.
Although Germany look to have a healthy and sustainable pool of talent, the water in the forward’s end is a little shallow. Barring a dramatic turn of events, Löw’s squad will go to France next summer hoping to emulate Spain by winning back-to-back international tournaments. If they are to do so, it is likely to be without the help of a striker. Whether this is a problem remains to be seen.
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