Lukas Podolski: A Short History

Top of the morning to y’all

The buzz all week around the Emirates has been about the acquisition of FC Cologne prized asset and German international Lukas Podolski and the trend caught on worldwide as at Monday afternoon, #Podolski was a worldwide trend on social network site Twitter.com. This morning, I am bringing a short history of our latest signing Lukas Podolski. Enjoy

CLUB CAREER
Lukas Josef Podolski is a left footed attacker known for his strong shot, technique and probing attacks from the left side. He joined 1. FC Köln in 1995 where he broke into the first team in 2003 and made 81 appearances for the club before moving to Bayern Munich. After three years in Munich with mixed success, Podolski returned to Köln. He was first capped by Germany in 2004 and has been part of the squad in all major tournaments since then. Although he was eligible to play for Germany and Poland, Podolski chose to play for Germany.

FC Köln

Podolski began playing football at the age of six in the youth team of FC Bergheim, where he played until he joined 1. FC Köln in 1995. It was there where Podolski's talents were first noticed. In 2003, at the age of 18, Podolski was still part of the club's youth side. At this time the club found itself in dire straits battling to avoid relegation from the Bundesliga. First team boss Marcel Koller, working on a shoestring budget, invited Podolski to train with the senior players and he made his top flight debut shortly afterwards on 22 November 2003. Even though Köln failed to avoid a drop to the 2nd division, Podolski had shown what he could do, scoring 10 goals in his first 19 senior appearances. This was the best tally by an 18-year-old in the history of the Bundesliga.
Though his call up to the German Euro 2004 squad brought along interest from several top clubs, Podolski stayed at Köln to help the club gain promotion in the 2004–05 season. With 24 goals, Podolski advanced to become the league's best scorer. Somewhat unusually, Podolski remained part of the Germany squad, even though he did not play in the national top-tier league.
After Köln were promoted, the pressure was on Podolski to keep the club in the Bundesliga practically singlehandedly. Podolski managed to score 12 goals in the 2005–06 season, but eventually, Köln were relegated again. It became clear that Podolski would not stay again to push them through the 2006–07 season—even more so, as Podolski was becoming an integral part of the national team.

Bayern Munich

In 2006, clubs such as Liverpool F.C., Bayern Munich, Hamburger SV, SV Werder Bremen, and even Real Madrid manifested their interest in Podolski, even though he had a contract with 1. FC Köln through 2007. On 1 June 2006, Podolski announced that a transfer agreement had been reached with Bayern Munich, allowing him to join the Bavarian side for the 2006–07 season. Financial details of the deal were not immediately available, but the transfer fee was speculated to be around €10 million. He made his Bundesliga debut for Bayern on 11 August 2006 with a 2–0 victory against Borussia Dortmund, coming on as a substitute in the 88th minute. On 9 September 2006, he came on as a second half substitute in a DFB cup game versus FC St. Pauli. Only 26 seconds after the second half started, he scored the equaliser, evening the match 1–1. On 14 October 2006, with his first Bundesliga goal for Bayern, Podolski helped to secure the club's 4–2 win over Hertha Berlin. On 26 October 2006, Podolski suffered a serious injury to his right ankle joint caused by teammate, Mark van Bommel, during a training session. Consequently, Podolski missed more than five match weeks. He returned from this injury and scored against Alemannia Aachen. He sometimes communicates with former Bayern and fellow national team striker Miroslav Klose, also a Polish-born Aussiedler, in Polish to hinder their opposition's understanding of their conversation.
When Bayern bought in Italian striker Luca Toni, "Poldi" was moved down the pecking order and received less playing time due to the coach's preference to partner Klose and Toni together instead. After a rather unhappy season at Bayern, he returned to former club Köln on 1 July 2009.

Return to 1. FC Köln

After Podolski was assured by national team coach Joachim Löw that a return to 1. FC Köln would not harm his chances of international football, an agreement to sign him was agreed between Bayern Munich and Köln on 20 January 2009, although he would not return to Köln until the start of the summer transfer window. On 1 July, Podolski returned to Köln on a four-year contract, and the transfer is speculated to be around €10 million, equivalent to the fee Bayern paid to sign him in 2006. Köln created a website where people were able to buy pixels of an image of Lukas Podolski for €25 per 8x8 pixel square, in order to gather €1 million to reduce the cost of the transfer.
Having just moved from Bayern Munich, Podolski had a poor first season at Köln, scoring just three times the entire season. One of his goals however, came from a free kick against his former club to salvage a draw.
In the 2010–11 season, Podolski scored his 50th Bundesliga goal in the match against Hannover 96 in March 2011. During the entire season, Podolski scored thirteen goals and seven assists.

International debut and breakthrough

In late 2003, after several impressive performances in his first few Bundesliga games, Polish media suggested then-Polish national team coach Paweł Janas should check Podolski out, as he was still eligible to play for Poland. Janas ignored the request stating in one of the press interviews that "as for today we have much better strikers in Poland and I don't see a reason to call up a player just because he played one or two good matches in the Bundesliga. He's not even a regular starter at his club." By that time Podolski was still interested in representing Poland, but as the season progressed German media increasingly highlighted his performances to suggest he should be called up to the German national team. When his full potential was finally unveiled, he had already decided to represent Germany. At the end of the season Köln were relegated, but Podolski impressed so much, that he held his debut for Rudi Völler's Germany on 6 June 2004, at age 19, in Kaiserslautern against Hungary with a late substitute appearance. He had become the first second-division player since 1975 to break into the national team.

OVERALL

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
FC Cologne	176	81	0.46
Bayern Munich	55	17	0.31
Germany	95	43	0.45

2011/12

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
FC Cologne	30	18	0.6
Germany	9	3	0.33

2010/11

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
FC Cologne	34	14	0.41
Germany	22	8	0.36

2009/10

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
FC Cologne	31	3	0.1
Germany	8	4	0.5

2008/09

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
Bayern Munich	28	8	0.29
Germany	19	14	0.74

2007/08

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
Bayern Munich	25	5	0.2
Germany	1	1	1

2006/07

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
Bayern Munich	2	4	2
Germany	14	5	0.36

2005/06

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
FC Cologne	32	12	0.38
Germany	12	8	0.67

2004/05

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
FC Cologne	30 (2. Bundesliga)	24	0.8
Germany	8	2	0.25

2003/04

	Appearances	Goals	Goals per game
FC Cologne	19	10	0.53

Personal life

 Podolski was born to Waldemar Podolski and to Krystyna Podolska, a former member of the Polish national handball team in the Silesian industrial town of Gliwice (near Katowice), Poland.
In 1987, when Łukasz Podolski was two years old, his family emigrated from Poland to West Germany and were given Aussiedler status as a result of his paternal grandparents having German citizenship prior to WWII (Gliwice had until 1945 been a part of Germany as Gleiwitz). Podolski grew up in Bergheim, North Rhine-Westphalia, and later in Pulheim, both near Cologne.

Podolski holds both German and Polish nationality, but has stated that he does not have a Polish passport. In an interview Podolski said that the Polish football association never cared about him until he started playing for the German U21 national team and received coverage in the media. At that point, Podolski arrived at the decision, but nevertheless "there are two hearts beating" in his chest. In an interview in the Polish Przegląd Sportowy from 2011, Podolski stated that he always wanted to play in Poland as he is a Pole but plays for the German team.

Podolski's longtime girlfriend Monika Puchalski gave birth to their first child, Louis Gabriel Podolski, on 14 April 2008. In April 2011, the couple married in a civil ceremony in Cologne, Germany. In June 2011, they had a church wedding in Kamionna, Węgrów County, Poland.

That's all for now folks, be right back on Friday for a preview of our final home game of the season against Norwich. Drop your comments on my Twitter page at http://www.twitter.com/nigeriangunners and i will be glad to read from you. 

Much thanks to Arsenal.com and Wikipedia.com for the materials for this writeup. 

Till then, God Bless the Arsenal Iree o.