As much as those in England are obsessed with the talents of Jadon Sancho, the most exciting young attacker in the Bundesliga is not British, Norwegian or Canadian. He’s as German as they come.
Born in the ancient German city of Aachen, the city in which Charlemagne sat on his throne, Kai Havertz is the man who should be the target of $100 million transfer fees to the Premier League or LaLiga more so than any other player in the Bundesliga.
Especially after what he did on Friday.
Havertz became the first player to score 35 Bundesliga goals before his 21st birthday with a marvelously scrappy goal against Freiburg on Friday. Havertz, who turns 21 on June 11, started the play with a deft one-touch pass to Leon Bailey. When the Jamaican played the ball back into Havertz’s path, the German found the only angle available to score and executed.
KAI. HAVERTZ.
He becomes the first player in @Bundesliga_EN history to score 35 goals before his 21st birthday. pic.twitter.com/IWE7usQ7nl— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) May 29, 2020
While the finish, an inglorious shove with his toe, was nothing to write home about, it was indicative of the type of player Havertz is. He’s not as flashy as Sancho, whose speed and foot skills dazzle fans in his native England. He’s not a clinical, brute-force finisher like Norway striker Erling Haaland. He’s not a lightning-quick prodigy like Canadian wingback Alphonso Davies. He’s just Kai Havertz, doing his own thing and doing it better than any goal scorer at his age in Bundesliga history.
Havertz’s strike proved to be the match winner, Leverkusen holding off Freiburg 1-0 to, at least for the moment, jump into third place in the Bundesliga.
Nominally listed as an attacking midfielder/winger, Havertz has shown versatility, even lining up as a center forward, as he did Friday. Some have described him as an Ozil-Ballack hybrid, which is high praise akin to saying a USWNT player is an Akers-Rapinoe hybrid.
Friday’s strike broke a record set by Klaus Fischer, who had scored 34 goals before his 21st birthday 50 years ago. Fischer went on to score 268 Bundesliga goals in his career, second-most all time, trailing only the legendary Gerd Müller.
Can Havertz recreate Fischer’s career in Germany? Possibly, but at this rate it’ll be hard to keep him in Germany as he’s already been linked to a move to the Premier League.
(Almost completely unrelated, I feel I must once again call out Fox’s miserable TV coverage of the Bundesliga. The American broadcaster still refuses to put any effort into broadcasting one of the only major sporting events available on TV in the U.S., providing no pre- or postgame coverage, just the bare minimum. Pathetic.)
