Monday, October 4th, 2021
Terodde now to Bayern?
No mercy for darling!
By Tobias Nordmann
Dieter Schatzschneider can still call himself the record scorer of the 2nd Bundesliga. However, he no longer has this title exclusively – and probably not for very long either. The Simon Terodde phenomenon catches up with legend and will probably pass very soon.
It was a really wonderful goal. A goal of the month. Possibly also the best of the year. And then it was also historical. The volley-karatekick scissor strike (that’s probably the best) was the first hit in Mehmet Can Aydin’s profile life. The 19-year-old Schalke hit the ball perfectly from a corner from about ten meters and thrashed it under the bar of the Ingolstadt goal (65th). It was the 2-0 for the Royal Blues in the second division home game against the promoted team. And yet this power work of art was still talked about peripherally. Because twelve minutes later there was another hit. Also a historical one. Just of a completely different meaning. Because Simon Terodde had scored his 153rd goal in league two.
It was a degree that is actually not worth talking about for a second. After successfully counterpressing the striker, his attacking colleagues Marius Bülter and Dominick Drexler cleared the striker so nicely that he only had to casually push the ball over the line. To a man like Terodde, such a task is almost an insult. It’s much too simple. But Terodde is always a thoroughbred attacker and after all, a goal is a goal. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter how it was achieved. Even if it’s a record hit. Or does anyone remember how Robert Lewandowski managed to break the 40-goal mark of the recently deceased Gerd Müller? Rather not. And so now only the moment counts.
And the moment on Sunday afternoon in the Schalke Arena made Terodde the most successful second division striker in history. He caught up with Dieter Schatzschneider with his 153rd goal. For now, the Schalke player has to share the title with the eternal “treasure” who mutated into a goal monster at Hannover 96 in the late 1970s and early 80s. The one who has now caught up is sure that the path of the two at the top will only be a short one together. Terodde has been too unstoppable in league two for years. The 33-year-old may be pulling past the next match day. As much as Schatzschneider grants his successor the sole record, he would not like to see it in two weeks if things continue after the international break. Because then Schalke will present in Hanover. It doesn’t have to be to be dethroned at home.
The standard is just too stark
The legend doesn’t care about anything else. And it has to be, because he can’t prevent Terodde from doing what he does best: scoring goals in the second division. And so Schatzschneider just told the sports information service: “If he were a hollow nut, I wouldn’t bother. I can see, however, that he is a good boy and he has my respect for a very, very great performance. He is a good one , and after work. ” Yes, Terodde is a good one. But with one major flaw. He has the eternal suspicion that he’s too good for league two but not good enough for league one. He played 58 times in the House of Lords. He got ten goals there. It’s not terribly bad, but it’s not really good either.
The problem for Terodde is that he himself has set the standard for evaluating his performance very high. Because he just can’t be stopped in the House of Commons. If the ball lands near the penalty area, it is almost always dangerous. Because he is simply not calculable for his opponents and therefore not controllable. Terodde is good at headers, but he also hits regularly with both his left and right foot. From the point of view he’s mercilessly effective. Terodde can hold the ball strong and spin quickly around his opponents. In the 2nd division he regularly breaks up his opponents. And it doesn’t let up with every year that it gets older. For Schalke, he is back in eleven league goals after nine games. For Hamburger SV, who once again failed to rise, he scored 24 times in the past season. A remarkable yield that repeats second division season after second division season. He struck 29 times for 1. FC Köln and 25 times each before that for VfB Stuttgart and VfL Bochum. Numbers that only reach Robert Lewandowski one floor higher with this regularity.
But why hasn’t it been enough for Terodde to have a great career in the first division? Peter Neururer has a very interesting theory. “In the Bundesliga, his teams have changed the system again and again and he couldn’t show what he can actually do there,” said the Wuppertaler SV board of directors at Sport1. In fact, Terodde needs crosses – whether high or flat – in a driving offensive game. He’s not the type of hopeful solo entertainer in a desperate defensive football.
Incidentally, the development of the striker into a phenomenon has a lot to do with the coach Neururer. He only sent him away from MSV Duisburg in the summer of 2008. “It was a stupid situation for a coach who sees a huge talent but has four or five top second division strikers,” remembers Neururer. “It hurt, but then I advised him to change. An outstanding guy back then who was incredibly committed.” Terodde embarked on a hard path that even pushed him to the limit. In between, Terodde reveals to the “11friends” that he didn’t feel like it anymore. He got in touch with his father and said: “I’m going to quit football, it won’t do any more.” It turned out differently. It turned out fine.
A goal was revoked from the “treasure”
They met again in Bochum six years later. Terodde had become a good striker at Union Berlin, but not the outstanding goalscorer he is now. Neururer relied fully on the talent that he was once unable to use. And was rewarded. Even if he didn’t survive the season as a coach himself, it was the breakthrough for Terodde. From season to season he got better, he became more dangerous. And now, ten years after he scored his first second division goal (for Union), he is the most successful man in the history of the House of Commons. A little coincidence helped him. Because in mid-September, Schatzschneider was denied a goal. A “video evidence” 42 years late, as Sport1 calls it, revealed when viewing archive images of the NDR that Schatzschneider’s 1-0 in the 4-2 win in Bremerhaven on July 28, 1979 was not achieved by him, it was an own goal. The hit was then actually canceled.
Now, of course, it’s not as if that changed anything. The record might not have fallen for two, three, four weeks. But he would have fallen. And what’s next? Sure, first become the sole man at the top. But then? Another ambitious goal at the end of your career? Maybe it’s going to Bayern? Schatzschneider would urgently advise the record champions to commit. “If I were Bayern Munich, I would get it. That doesn’t hurt. And then he only plays ten times,” he told Sport1. Neururer also sees it similarly: “I’m sure: If he were to play as a backup at Bayern, then he would score at least as many goals there as Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting.” Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be FC Bayern, ex-club Bochum would have needed after the serious injury of Simon Zoller. And a system that Terodde accommodates: fast outside players who are urgently looking for a buyer.
But currently Terodde has found his luck and is perhaps more valuable than ever. He is currently (statistically) heading for 41.5 goals (which of course does not work). He would then set Horst Hrubesch’s all-time record. He scored a phenomenal 41 times for Rot-Weiss Essen in the 1977/78 season.