At the moment Mario Gomez is unstoppable. He’s at that point in his career when his undoubted skills and hard won experience have combined to bring him to the peak of their powers.
The German striker celebrated his 200th league appearance on Sunday the only way he knows how, with a goal. His strike at the weekend took his league tally to 18 and although season-by-season Gomez has always been prolific, in previous years spells of brilliance would be broken up with lengthy droughts in front of goal. Now at 26 the German international has found the consistency that has rightly seen him described as the best "pure" striker in the world.
When you look at his recent achievements it’s hard to argue. The Munich Sportsman of the year scored an astonishing 50 goals in 2011. This season he’s averaging a goal a game, tops the Champions League scoring charts and is on course to beat legendary German striker Gerd Muller’s 40 year old record of scoring 40 league goals in a single season. But it has not always been easy for the ice-cold striker with the ice blue v1.11 Speed boots.
In 2009 after scoring a whopping 24 Bundesliga goals in his final season at unfashionable Stuttgart, the newly crowned German Player of the Year made his big money move to Bayern Munich. Initially he started slowly as the record fee of more than €30 million hung heavily around his neck. Short of confidence, Mario went eight months without scoring as coach Louis van Gaal left him on the bench.
After an erratic first year and on the verge of leaving Germany, the 2010-11 season finally saw Gomez given his chance. After ten games of finding his feet Gomez’s career at Bayern took off. En route to scoring a stunning 36 goals in his next 34 games he’d managed to win over his manager, the crowd but most importantly himself.
Always his own biggest critic Mario said, "I am proud that I have been able to convince the man from whom I have had the greatest resistance in my career." Since that breakthrough season Gomez has never looked back for club or country.
For club, the hugely respected coach Ottmar Hitzfeld has said of Gomez’s contribution, ‘you could say that Gomez for Bayern is as important as Lionel Messi is for Barcelona’. For country, the deadly finisher helped Germany win every qualifying game for Euro 2012. In this form he’s destined to put his new PUMA Dresden Blue v1.11 Speeds to good use by adding to his 21 goals in his 50 appearances for the national team this summer at the European Championships.
But for the man of the moment, who German national coach Jogi Löw described as having ‘unbelievable potential, matched by very few forwards in Europe”, you’d expect nothing less.
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