![]() The club's problem was that the rest of the team were very stoppable indeed. There was no stopping Cologne's teenage prodigy. Without him, I would perhaps be playing for Bergheim today, and wouldn't have been able to have such a career." In my day, there were a lot fewer players who got to play in the top flight so young," Podolski explained. How good an achievement was that? It took Florian Wirtz - another Cologne youth academy product - to claim the record from him. He ended the season with 10 goals in 19 Bundesliga appearances, a feat never previously achieved by an 18-year-old. Three days later, he netted the first of his 55 German top-flight goals for the club in a 1-1 draw with Hansa Rostock. On 11 November 2003, Podolski signed his maiden pro deal, and a further 11 days on, he was a Bundesliga player making his debut against Hamburg. Of course, Koller's gamble paid off handsomely. Immediately you noticed things: that he had a very strong left foot, a perfect centre of gravity, that he's very dynamic and powerful," explained Koller, who decided to take his young protégé on a first-team training camp and the rest is, well, German football history. "I became Cologne coach in November 2003 and shortly thereafter I saw Lukas Podolski on a football pitch for the first time. Marcel Koller gave Lukas Podolski his Bundesliga break while Cologne coach. At the start of the 2003/04 season, the 18-year-old Podolski was still part of the club's youth set-up - scoring eight times in the opening eight games for the U19 side - to catch Koller's eye. Marcel Koller is the man Podolski means, the one who saw the potential and took the risk. And everyone knows what came after that." I said to myself, 'So, now you're here, train!' Of course, you also need a little luck and a coach who has faith in you. "I was this kid from Poland, an immigrant kid, who didn't let himself get pushed around in training. "I just went for it and took on the challenge," explained Podolski of how he established himself in a fiercely competitive environment. With a flurry of players called Lukas in the squad, Podolski was christened 'Poldi'. He was just six when he joined Jugend 07 Bergheim, his local club, and within four years he was pulling on the shirt of his first football love: 1. But his football ability, which stood out early on, earned him kudos in social circles, and also the nickname by which he is universally known in Germany. Hailing from an immigrant family, at first Podolski was not even Lukas - he instead wrote his first name with the Polish spelling Łukasz. When I land at the airport or walk down certain streets, when I see the stadium for example, then I get butterflies in my stomach. "There are times when I'm totally in love with it. "It's hard to put into words," said Podolski, trying to find how to express his connection to the city that made him. It is a long way from those first tentative dribbles in Bergheim, a suburb of Cologne, to owning a string of kebab shops, an ice cream parlour, a sportswear brand with a shop in the centre and, well, generally being regarded as a living legend of the city. Every day, he would be out there on the playground with a ball." "That's when Lukas started getting into football. "We had nothing," said Waldemar, who made the move in the dying throes of the Cold War. When he came into the world on 4 June 1985 it was in the Polish city of Gliwice, but he was just two years old when his parents, former footballer Waldemar and ex-international handballer Krysztyna, and his sister headed across the border to then-West Germany, travelling to the Domstadt to re-join their children's paternal grandparents.
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