This is Legacy, the new section of Voetbalzone in the run-up to the 2026 World Cup. Every week we delve into the story behind a football nation. This time we focus on Germany, once famous for producing the world’s most deadly strikers. From Gerd Müller to Miroslav Klose: the number 9 shirt stood for power, precision and pride. However, that has changed since 2014. It’s more of a question mark now, a symbol of a team still searching for its next big finisher, and perhaps even its own identity.
If you look through a German lens, you will see that the national team’s greatest success in this millennium also marked the beginning of a deep-rooted crisis. That’s easy to say with what we know today.
When Miroslav Klose scored his sixteenth World Cup goal in 2014 – in that legendary 7-1 against Brazil – he became the all-time top scorer at the World Cup. That record still stands. That goal not only ended his own international career, but also the era of the classic German striker. For generations, Germany produced icons in that role: from Uwe Seeler and Gerd Müller to Klaus Fischer, Horst Hrubesch, Rudi Völler, Jürgen Klinsmann and Oliver Bierhoff. Then everything changed.
This is the third story from Voetbalzone’s new World Cup Legacy section. Listen to the podcast version now on Spotify of Apple.
For more than thirteen years – 137 international matches and 71 goals – Klose embodied German efficiency: he was always in the right place, always ready to score. When he said goodbye after the 2014 World Cup, there was a gap. The traditional German number 9 was suddenly gone, and from that moment on a long search began: new strikers, new ideas, new formations… but no clear successor.
Getty Images
The search for a successor
For years, Mario Gomez was seen as the man to succeed Klose. He had the profile: strong, good in the air and a real finisher. Yet things never really came to fruition in the national team. Gomez did not take his chances. He was dry during official matches for Germany for almost three years and his huge miss against Austria at the 2008 European Championship continued to haunt him.
After Klose’s departure, Germany therefore often opted for a false nine: midfielders or wingers who had to play as a striker. Mario Götze, Thomas Müller, Serge Gnabry and Kai Havertz all got a chance. But after three disappointing tournaments – the 2018 World Cup, European Championship 2021 and World Cup 2022 – it became clear that this was not a lasting solution.
And so, heading into the 2026 World Cup, one big question hangs over German football: where has the classic German striker gone?
Youth and lost instinct
To understand why Germany has been without a real striker for so long, you have to look at the youth academies of the past fifteen years. There, the focus was increasingly on modern, versatile attackers: players who can combine, move between the lines and participate in pressing. Players like Mario Götze – technically brilliant, important in 2014, but ultimately someone who didn’t get the most out of his career.
Developing real finishers, strikers with strength, a sense of position and that elusive goal instinct, was seen as old-fashioned. The idea that you can train a striker to get to the ball just half a tap earlier than a defender, as Gerd Müller could, faded into the background. Technical flexibility was given priority.
There was something else: it was also felt that the classic center forward made the game less dynamic. Too little involved in combinations, too dependent on crosses, something German teams were not built for at the time.
The result was that one of the most decisive positions in German football was slowly becoming less and less well filled. Where once players like Müller, Völler, Klinsmann and later Klose drove defenders to despair, now came a generation that moved smartly in spaces – Thomas Müller, Götze, Timo Werner, Havertz, Gnabry – but who often lacked the real killer instinct in the penalty area.
Getty Images
The core of the problem lay in the idea that the physical and killer instinct of a striker could be learned later. First, young attackers had to learn to combine and move like a number 10 or a winger. But Klose showed that being a striker is not just about winning duels or being strong, but above all about a constant focus on the goal. That kind of instinct only arises if you train it for years and focus on it. Without that, a striker never becomes the natural end point of an attack.
Yet young German strikers were taught to drop and combine more often, instead of using their strength in the penalty area. Everything that belongs to a classic finisher – the sense of space, improvisation, even brute force – was given less priority.
Hannes Wolf, head of development at the German Football Association since 2023, quickly sounded the alarm. He recently said: “We trained poorly, there’s no lying about that. In terms of player development we were the worst of the top countries.”
He now wants to completely change it. The premise: a striker only touches the ball thirty times on average in a 90-minute match. If you train him for half an hour, he will make perhaps ten ball contacts. How should you train such a person within a complete 11-on-11 training? That may have worked in the past, but not anymore. Strikers mainly learned in matches and not enough during targeted training.
A pragmatic approach
And so, Germany is mainly looking for a practical solution towards the 2026 World Cup. They simply don’t have a new top striker like Klose. Niclas Füllkrug’s relatively late breakthrough in November 2022 – he was already 29 – made it clear that the era of the false nine was over. Füllkrug brought exactly what had been missing for years: physicality, heading power and a nose for goal. His call symbolized a return to sobriety.
Tim Kleindienst was also selected as a physically strong option. With players like Füllkrug and Kleindienst, Germany got a real target man again, someone who makes room for the wing attackers and takes some pressure off the midfielders. They are not superstars, but they do master the basics of a classic striker: first controlling the ball in the box and winning duels.
Getty Images
Getty Images
The rise of Woltemade
Now Nick Woltemade is the player who best shows how a classic, physically strong striker can perform in modern football. He is almost two meters tall, technically skilled and extremely talented. With the right guidance, he can develop into a world-class striker. Völler and Nagelsmann already saw his qualities at Stuttgart, and his transfer to Newcastle for no less than 75 million euros underlines that confidence.
Woltemade can form the bridge between Klose’s legacy and contemporary football: a physically strong striker who has a killer instinct and tactical insight. His development is in many ways the ultimate test of the new German philosophy.
When Nagelsmann and Voller saw Woltemade shine for Stuttgart in the German Cup final last season, they were able to witness his qualities and elegance in passing opponents up close.
Voller believes Woltemade’s strength and game acumen are world-class. “Despite his height, he still needs to improve a bit in heading, but those are things you can certainly learn and train. If he improves even a little, he will have a great career.”
Getty Images
Recently, national coach Julian Nagelsmann was also very satisfied with the progress Woltemade has made: “I think he has done very well. There are still a few steps to be taken, but he is on the right track.”
The goal is clear: Germany must again dare to train a number 9 as a true specialist – someone who focuses on finishing, heading under pressure and retains the instinct that made players like Klose so unique. Only in this way can Germany, with its technically strong midfielders, find the missing piece of the puzzle to compete at the highest level again.
The national coach’s words can also be interpreted as direct instructions to Woltemade to use his talent and adopt the right attitude to develop further. The development of more players like him now deserves to be reconsidered at all levels. Coaches must open the doors again to the specialization of strikers in youth training. More individual training should be given in finishing and heading in extreme pressure situations. The repetition of these specific situations, which Wolf describes as essential, must increase exponentially to maintain the instinct that made someone like Klose famous.
With the help of Wolf, Germany must ensure that its attackers relearn how to dominate the penalty area at the decisive moment, as the great examples of the past did intuitively. It’s about correcting what has been forgotten in the age of possession obsession.
Only then can the German national team, which is still full of technically skilled midfielders, find one of the final pieces of the puzzle to become successful again. The hope is small, but the need is clear: to restore the German tradition of scoring strikers in order to be able to compete again for winning the European Championships and World Cups.
