Is Stefan Kiessling getting the credit he deserves?

Stefan Kiessling of Bayer Leverkusen

Ask Stefan Kiessling, and he’ll tell you that World Cup 2014 is as good as wet cheese for him. The International break was over last week and once again, the in-form striker did not feature in Joachim ‘Jogi’ Loew’s plans for Germany against Austria and The Faroe Islands in the World Cup qualifiers.

Jogi preferred to stick with his usual pair of Miroslav Klose and Fiorentina frontman Mario Gomez up front. Although Germany comfortably won both the fixtures with a 3-0 score line, much has been talked about the way Kiessling has been repeatedly overlooked despite his prolific goal-scoring in recent times.

The 6’3″ German International has been at Leverkusen since 2006, and has been a consistent performer for The Werkself, netting 100 goals in 224 Bundesliga games. He found the net 25 times in 34 games in the Bundesliga last season, and finished first in the top scorer’s list, piping Borussia Dortmund hit-man Robert Lewandowski in the process. The striker has already found the net 6 times in 6 games this season, and racked up 3 assists to his name.

Despite such good showing, Loew succinctly refused to bring him back, not willing to change his tactics. The last time Kiessling played for Die Mannschaft was against Uruguay, in the third place play-off at the World Cup, where he came on as a substitute and played for 17 minutes (not knowing that it would be his last seventeen minutes for a really long time).

In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Kiessling said that he won’t feature for Germany as long as Loew was the manager, clearly frustrated with the manager’s selection process.

Here, we compare the statistics of the three players based on last season’s performances:

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No other Bundesliga player had a better percentage of aerial duels won and shots per game than Kiessling. The German won the man of the match award 10 times, just one less than Franck Ribery.

Offensive statistics:

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Current season statistics show that the Kiessling has already set the pace amongst the three players:

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“In all the years I was at Everton, I followed him all the time. But the money was sadly lacking. I have great respect for him. He is a great player who is strong with his head and his feet.” -David Moyes

If the striker continues with his current form, there could be a tussle among Europe’s top clubs to get his signature in the Winter Transfer window. However, it seems unlikely that Bayer Leverkusen will let the talismanic striker leave. If they somehow decide to sell their star player, the striker is valued at £11.5m by transfermarkt.co.uk.

All this leads us to just a simple verdict, that Stefan Kiessling is simply peaking at the wrong age and the striker deserves a lot of credit for his work with ‘The Factory Squad’. The German is an affable student of the game, comfortable with either foot (although a greater percentage of his goals come from the right foot) and is a threat with his head too when it comes to set-pieces.

It remains to be seen if the player can make it into Joachim Loew’s scheme of things. An injury to either Klose or Gomez coupled with a fruitful outing in the European football could be an opportunity for the striker to put on the national colours and prove himself at the level which has secluded him, after all neither Miroslav Klose nor Mario Gomez is going to be involved in Champions League this season, unlike Stefan Kiessling, whose future looks bright for the time being.