The fitting farewell to a great career: Lukas Podolski celebrated his last appearance as a professional footballer with frenetic cheers.
The 2014 world champion came on as a substitute in the 69th minute when his hometown club Gornik Zabrze won 6:2 (5:0) against the overwhelmed tenth-placed Polish Ekstraklasa, Radomiak Radom. The day before, the 40-year-old announced his retirement in a video on social media.
The fans of the 14-time Polish champion, whom “Poldi” only took over as full owner on Thursday after five years as a player, paid homage to him before the game began. A choreography showed Podolski’s broadly grinning, sun-glassed likeness before the words “Boss” and “It’s going to be good.”
The third most successful DFB goalscorer after Miroslav Klose and Gerd Müller, who quickly became the favorite of the football nation with his left-handed stick and loose mouth, was born in 1985 in Gliwice, Poland, just outside Zabrze.
Video: Poldi companion says goodbye to “a really great one”
Thanks to his 20-minute farewell appearance, the “Kölsche Jung” has a record in the Ekstraklasa: at 40 years and 353 days, no field player in Poland’s top division was older. On top of that, Zabrze starts the coming season as runner-up behind Lech Poznan in its era as sole owner – and therefore has a chance of reaching the premier class in the Champions League qualification.
