On November 27, 2021, Niclas Fullkrug scored an equaliser for 10th-placed Werder Bremen away to Holstein Kiel. In Bundesliga 2.
Twelve months and 26 goals later, the 29-year-old came off the bench for Germany with time running out on their World Cup stay in Qatar, made a darting run into Spain’s box, picked up a ball off Jamal Musiala that wasn’t really his to take… and switched to autopilot.
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“The ball was at my feet,” Fullkrug recalled later without a hint of regret nor glee. “I controlled it because I was on the move. Then pure instinct kicked in. That’s usually better than starting to think about things. It was nice to see the ball hit the corner of the net.”
Oh, it was. Fullkrug’s 83rd-minute equaliser at Al Bayt Stadium saved the Nationalmannschaft from probable elimination and has given them a decent degree of control before their final group game.
Niclas Fullkrug stepping up to the plate for Germany! 👊#BBCWorldCup pic.twitter.com/iFq5Stj2tv
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) November 27, 2022
Unless Japan beat Spain, any win by two goals or more against Costa Rica will see them qualify for the last 16. “Such a late goal gives you a bit of a sense of victory,” said the Hannover-born forward.
Captain Manuel Neuer went further. “We won the game from the bench today,” Germany’s goalkeeper said, before correcting himself. “It feels like that, anyway.”
The idea of Fullkrug becoming Germany’s World Cup hero would have sounded like a silly joke a few months ago.
An Under-18s and Under-20s Germany international who played alongside Antonio Rudiger at youth level, Fullkrug had never hit the big time, spending most of his time in the second division instead.
Just when Werder, multiple trophy winners who lost their way over the last decade, made it back to the Bundesliga in 2019-20, Fullkrug ruptured his cruciate ligament. They went down without him.
Things did not quite go so well once he recovered from injury either. Following a dry spell of nine goalless games, Fullkrug came close to getting replaced before a managerial switch changed his and the side’s luck.
Bremen won promotion again under Ole Werner this summer and might well stay up, thanks to Fullkrug’s goals. A tally of 10 in 14 league games, the best strike rate of any German this season, gave national team manager Hansi Flick no option but to include him in his 26-strong squad for the World Cup.
“He’s got a good feeling for playing through the middle, he’ll end up being important for us,” Neuer said 10 days ago, after Fullkrug’s first game and goal for Germany, a 1-0 friendly win over Oman.
Some suspected the step up from a promoted Bundesliga side to a team full of Champions League regulars — and winners — might be a little too steep for “Fulle”, as they call him at the Weser Stadion. But his seven-minute cameo half an hour’s drive north of Doha saw enough impact, even aside from his goal, to make Flick consider a starting berth for him against Costa Rica.
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“It’s always about performance, about form, especially at a tournament,” the striker said, pleading his case with modesty but confidence.
“I’m happy that it’s not a disadvantage to play for promoted Werder when it comes to getting called up by the national team. I’m hoping that I can pay back the trust that’s been put in me on a continuous basis, not just for one game.”
Flick, who praised the striker as “a great boy with his heart in the right place”, had told him that he wanted him to “exude danger”, be a “presence in the box” and most importantly, behave like “a real striker” in a couple of confidence-boosting talks this week, Fullkrug revealed.
Germany have had plenty of fast, versatile forwards but have sorely lacked an old school-poacher since Miroslav Klose retired in 2014. Maybe, in hindsight, that has been the biggest problem all along. Up until this autumn, Flick still felt he had enough up front, even without the injured Timo Werner, but developments at Bayern Munich, who provide the majority of the starting XI, would have seen him reconsider his strategy.
The champions tried to replace Robert Lewandowski (now at Barcelona) with a more flexible line-up at the start of the campaign but found that the team functioned dramatically better with 33-year-old Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting as a reference point.
What is happening in Bavaria always influences the way the national team play, which is why Fullkrug’s sudden relevance should not have come as a total surprise. The lesson seems to be that a decent, unspectacular centre-forward prepared to toil for the team is better than none at all.
Fullkrug, the unlikely hero of the hour, was not in the mood for celebrations, however. “There’s no need for cartwheels after a 1-1 draw with Spain,” he said unmoved. A typically dispassionate northerner, he smiled wryly at the suggestion that he might have a sleepless night after the adrenalin rush of a first World Cup goal.
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“I’m always very calm. It’s not the first goal that I’ve scored and not the most important one, either. We now start focussing on the next game. This one goal does little for me if we don’t get past the group stage at the end.”
He knows what he is talking about, from his fairly recent experiences at less exalted levels: a year ago, that equaliser at Kiel was not quite enough to stop Werder from going down 2-1.
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(Top photo: Getty Images)