“Only Tiki-Taka”
Claudio Pizarro was one of the best strikers in Europe during his career. The Peruvian, who will say goodbye in Bremen on Saturday, now misses this type of player in the Bundesliga.
According to the former goalscorer, there is a fundamental lack of classic center forwards in modern football, especially in Germany, where players in this position had a feared reputation in South America. “These days you attach so much importance to good wingers, but when they get the ball in the middle, sometimes there isn’t a striker in the middle who knows exactly what he has to do,” said the 43-year-old in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. “. As a coach, he would “almost always” play with a centre-forward.
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“If the opponent has two towers in defence, you can also try it with more agile strikers. But there should always be a centre-forward at least in the squad, always!” said the record goalscorer from Bundesliga club Werder Bremen, who also achieved cult status at FC Bayern, and recalled “what we used to think about German strikers in South America: be careful, here we come those closets! They were tough, they could fight and they hit it off at the front. You need players like that in every team. Now you suddenly have a lot of fast, good technicians, but no longer any real strikers. Or are some coming again?”
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Pizarro on center forward decline: “Only Tiki-Taka”
This development is probably due to the fact that “for about ten years, many good teams have only wanted to play tiki-taka,” said Pizarro. “In the past, strikers were just there to score goals, even if they weren’t always the best footballers. Today they are supposed to combine, press and so on. Yes this is important. But you still need real strikers.” With world footballer Robert Lewandowski (from Bayern to FC Barcelona) and Erling Haaland (Borussia Dortmund/Manchester City), two strikers left the Bundesliga this summer.
Pizarro is the oldest goalscorer in Bundesliga history and the most frequently used foreign player. He won the treble with FC Bayern in 2013. Numerous companions are involved in his farewell game (Saturday, 5 p.m.), three teams compete against each other. He himself is currently playing “almost zero” football, said Pizarro: “But I run, I do a little interval and strength training, stability exercises. My body tells me: I can’t do nothing. I still have too much energy.”
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