Youssoufa Moukoko with many goals in the DFB U21 team

Youssoufa Moukoko was happy, how could it be otherwise, after his next coup in junior football, which the Borussia Dortmund attacker has shaped like no other talent for years. He scored all three goals in the German U-21 team’s 3-2 win against the Bulgarians in Sofia. This means Moukoko is the scorer of five of the six goals the team scored in the current qualifying competition for the 2025 European Championships.

“It’s really good for me, in the end you can see that I’m in the right place,” said the 18-year-old goalscorer. A total of eleven goals in nine games make up Moukoko’s personal U-21 statistics. “I think the boys are always looking for me in the penalty area, I get the balls I need,” he said. He enjoys his role as the star of this team and surprisingly doesn’t give him the feeling that he actually belongs to the senior national team.

Moukoko “in the right place”

“The goal rate shows that he feels extremely comfortable here,” said coach Antonio Di Salvo, who was asked whether he feared he would soon have to hand over this ultra-efficient goalscorer to Julian Nagelsmann’s revitalized senior national team. Di Salvo replied that he was happy for every player who made this step; In this case, however, he has reason to hope that Moukoko will play for a long time in his team, which has managed a successful new start after a failed European Championship and a personnel change. Because Moukoko’s impression of being “in the right place” with the U21s is more than just an empty phrase.

It is quite difficult for him to develop into a permanently established Bundesliga footballer. In the current Bundesliga season he has only been on the pitch for 47 minutes so far, and recently he hasn’t even been substituted on. At BVB, Niklas Füllkrug and Sebastién Haller, there are two other center strikers ahead of Moukoko in the club hierarchy. “In the end it’s about trust, the coach trusts me and I’ll repay that,” he said after his U-21 goal show, which sounded like a promise: If Dortmund coach Edin Terzic trusted Moukoko, he could too expect a lot of hits. But it’s not quite that simple.

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In recent years, the view has become widespread in world football that good teams need tall, powerful center strikers who can assert themselves against strong central defenders in header duels when crossing crosses. Even Pep Guardiola, who has thought differently for a long time, has now seen this. This facet of the game is a constant topic in Dortmund, which is also why coach Terzic relies more on Füllkrug (1.89 meters) and Haller (1.91). And Nagelsmann preferred calling 32-year-old debutant Kevin Behrens (1.85) from Union Berlin to the senior national team rather than Moukoko (1.79).

The Dortmund talent will still mature and become a better player, but he will probably not grow any more. And it is uncertain whether he will be able to develop his footballing skills from the center of the attack to the wing or a little further back into midfield. That’s why Moukoko is a world-class youth player whose future in adult football is difficult to predict. What is pleasing, however, is that he accepts his situation and gives everything he has to offer in the U21, even if he has to play with this team, like on Friday and in the previous victory in Kosovo, in old-fashioned stadiums on bad grass and in front of half-empty stands.

“I told Youssoufa that it is a privilege to play here, that he must and can use his time here,” said Di Salvo, whose team is winning but is not yet playing the way the coach wants them to wishes. After a disappointing performance at all levels at the European Championship tournament in the summer, the team continues to struggle to find solutions against deep opponents. “We had a really hard time getting into the game, we lacked precision and speed of play,” said Di Salvo on Friday.

This was also due to the fact that Moukoko’s BVB colleague Karim Adeyemi is currently having little success, not only at the club but also in the DFB selection. Ansgar Knauff and Hoffenheim’s great talent Maximilian Beier also remained rather pale, but got a little stronger after the break. Di Salvo’s demand is: “We have to be able to trust ourselves more from the start and get more quality passes in.” This is one of the central topics for the next games in November against Estonia in Paderborn and in Essen against Poland. Di Salvo said he would have liked to combat such weaknesses now, but the second game of the current international phase, which was supposed to take place against Israel in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, has been canceled.