When Borussia Dortmund presented to the world last summer who the club had signed for the many millions through the sale of Jude Bellingham, among other things, Niclas Füllkrug grinned into the club camera. He had come from Werder Bremen, where he was not only extremely popular with the audience, but was also generous with the striker’s currency of goals.
Things were different in Dortmund. The transfer was critically examined there, and Füllkrug couldn’t provide too many arguments against it on the pitch. With his goal against Atlético Madrid in the second leg of the Champions League quarter-finals, he was directly involved in the 4-2 win and helped his team reach the semi-finals. “It was magical,” he said afterwards. “I moved here on August 30th in a situation where it wasn’t always easy and then I always tried to make the best of it and give my best performance.”
The national player had nine games without scoring before the encounter – meager for an attacker. He was asked about the quota in an interview with Amazon Prime after the game and made it clear in a Füllkrug-friendly way that he wasn’t particularly interested in it at that moment: “If you see this whole season, where I come from, what I’ve experienced my career, and that I’m now in the Champions League semi-finals with Borussia Dortmund – it doesn’t matter whether I scored in nine games or not.” It was crucial that the team progressed, “that was as important as my goal.”
But it doesn’t seem to have mattered to him at all, as he added that he wanted the goal to be a “reliever for the coming games”. He and Borussia Dortmund could certainly use that – Paris Saint-Germain is waiting for BVB in the semi-finals of the Champions League. And his striker Kylian Mbappé doesn’t need a chest remover.
