“I’ve never seen a goal like that from him before!” Niclas Füllkrug’s stroke of genius against Borussia Dortmund leaves observers stunned – will a record more than 40 years old be broken?
In the end, it was not quite enough, but Niclas Füllkrug once again grabbed the headlines after his star turn off the bench in the DFB Cup against Borussia Dortmund.
Füllkrug had complained about being substituted too late after his two penalties against Mainz 05 last week, but Werder coach Daniel Thioune initially rested him in Dortmund. Instead, Thioune handed Cedric Itten his first start. The Swiss international had been the only real bright spot for Fortuna Düsseldorf last season as they suffered a disastrous relegation from the second division.
The Swiss international failed to take his chance. Without Füllkrug, Werder looked toothless. Serhou Guirassy (6th minute) and Carney Chukwuemeka (17th minute) put BVB 2-0 up early, and Dortmund deserved their comfortable half-time lead.
Almost an hour in, Füllkrug finally came on alongside regulars Mitchell Weiser, Ludovit Reis and Senne Lynen. Then Julian Ryerson pulled Mick Schmetgens to the ground in the penalty area, giving Werder and Füllkrug a way back into the cup tie.
Füllkrug humiliates Anton and closes in on club record
Füllkrug, 33, coolly converted the penalty to pull a goal back (65th minute). It was his tenth goal in nine competitive matches. He has scored in every game since the season opener in Freiburg (1-4). Another goal against TSG Hoffenheim on the next Bundesliga matchday would see him equal Rudi Völler's 44-year-old club record. Völler scored for Werder in seven consecutive Bundesliga matches in the 1982/83 season.
His run now stands at six consecutive Bundesliga matches, and he has eleven goals in nine competitive matches. The impact substitute shocked BVB again, just as he had two and a half weeks ago in the league's 2-2 draw. This time, he did it with a goal of his own making.
Near the centre circle, Füllkrug nutmegged Waldemar Anton, set off on a solo run and drove the ball into the net from 18 metres. Even Sky pundit Fabian Kloß was speechless.
How does Füllkrug score his goals? "I don't know either!"
Asked by Sebastian Hellmann about the move leading up to the 2-2 equaliser, Kloß said: "Unbelievable. I've never seen him score a goal like that. If you took a sniff of him right now, you'd smell nothing but sweat and pure self-confidence. And joy at playing for Werder Bremen."
Since returning to the Weser in the summer after deeply unhappy spells at West Ham United and AC Milan, Füllkrug has been back at his best and is physically fit. When Sky asked after the match how he keeps managing to score, he admitted he had no answer: "I don't know either. But that's not what it's about. And that's the key: that it's not about that."
Although he called the last-second defeat, sealed by a stunning Marcel Sabitzer free-kick in stoppage time, "very bitter", Füllkrug added that "it's not the end of the world for us, to be quite honest". He pointed to the players given a chance to prove themselves against Dortmund, who are usually more accustomed to the role he occupied that evening. "We have 26 players in the squad and we said back in the summer that we need every single one of them. And the players have earned this chance."
Why Niclas Füllkrug no longer wants to talk about the national team
One question did not come Füllkrug's way on this bittersweet evening at Dortmund's Westfalenstadion. No media representative asked about a return to the Germany national team in November, after he had recently made it emphatically clear that he no longer wanted to discuss it.
"If I've now said 44 times that I don't want to talk about it, it would be cool if we stopped talking about it," he said after the 2-2 draw against newly promoted Paderborn in mid-October. Last Saturday, on ZDF's aktuelles sportstudio, he stressed again: "I'm not playing to get called up. I'm playing for Werder." Asked about his chances under Germany coach Jürgen Klopp, he said simply: "I'm just not interested."
