Late Bloomer

Take Andre Schürrle, Mario Götze, Marco Reus, Toni Kroos and throw in Mario Gomez for good measure. Add them all together and what do you get? After two weeks of the Bundesliga season, two goals fewer than one Sascha Mölders.

Sascha who? Even relatively committed German football fans could be forgiven for picturing David Duchovny in a business suit when they hear the name of the striker who has gone from division three to the top of the Bundesliga's scoring list in just over a year.

The case of a 26-year-old making such a prodigious leap indeed seems like an X-Files-level mystery. Yet before the start of the season, Mölders, who doesn't otherwise say much to the press, told kicker magazine: “I've gotten a considerable boost and can impose myself a lot more. I'll be even better in the first division.”

Bold words from a player who transferred from the second division for a humble fee of 175,000 euros ($250,000) and whose previous short stint in the Bundesliga was a failure. But he's more than kept his heady promise.

Mölders scored all of Augsburg's goals in the first two rounds this year and is the primary reason the newly promoted minnows from a small Bavarian city were undefeated.

So where does the mystery man come from? And more importantly how has he adapted so quickly to the demands of the elite flight of German football?

Journeyman on overdrive

On paper, until this season, Mölders seemed like a typical footballing journeyman.

A native of Essen, the striker was playing in the fifth division at the age of 19, a time when players with top-class talent are supposed to have attracted much more attention to themselves.

But a couple of decent seasons earned him a chance to show his stuff with MSV Duisburg's amateurs in 2006. Mölders rose to the challenge, and by 2007, he was promoted to the professional ranks, just as the team itself was promoted to division one.

Once there, Mölders seemed out of his depth. His balance for the season was zero goals in eleven appearances, and as of 2008, he was back plying his trade for third-division Rot-Weiss Essen.

But that radical demotion didn't dent Mölder's psyche. He was the leading goal scorer in the third division that season. In January 2010, he transferred to second-division FSV Frankfurt.

There, too, he proved himself, scoring 15 goals for an offensively anemic squad that didn't give him a whole lot of service. That was sufficient to convince Augsburg that he was worth FSV's modest asking price.

Even if he does nothing else this season, that investment will have paid off. And if things go well, Mölders could become one of those rare players who first truly make their mark in mid-career.

The right package

It's easy to forget in today's younger-is-better Bundesliga that a number of strikers on the wrong side of thirty have won the league's scoring title.

Martin Max, for example, was nothing to write home about until suddenly in 1999-2000, at the age of 31, he became Germany's top goal-getter for 1860 Munich. And he showed that was no accident by repeating the feat four years later for Hansa Rostock.

Michael Preetz, today the sporting director at Hertha Berlin, could serve as another model for Mölders. After bouncing between leagues for much of his playing career, the lanky striker finally established himself in the Bundesliga at the age of 30. He, too, won the Bundesliga's scoring title - in 1999.

Mölders is not only younger than that pair of past standouts. He also combines a lot of their physical attributes. 1 meter 87 in height, he has Preetz's bodily presence and is capable of knocking down and holding balls in the classic center-forward mold.

And as he's shown in both the second and now the first divisions, he also possesses Max's nose for goal and technical abilities. His tally against Kaiserslautern in Augsburg's 1-all draw on Sunday, for instance, came on a precise curling left-footer after he had faked out a central defender.

Two good matches, of course, do not a stellar season make in the elite class of German football. But Mölders has come from obscurity to establish himself as the top striker for a first-division Bundesliga club and the early-season bargain of the league.

And that means he'll be getting lots more chances to show that you don't need to be a teenager to be an effective offensive weapon in German football.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Matt Hermann