Does a striker have enough time in front of goal to think about such things like shooting first time?

Klose: “It’s mostly an unconscious thought process. Before every game, you study your opponents’ movements in the video analysis. Does the goalkeeper make himself big or small when facing close-range shots? Am I better off shooting over his shoulder because he keeps his hands quite low? That analysis means you go into games with a few clear ideas of how you want to shoot or head the ball, and you end up doing those things automatically.”

When you’re shooting, do you see where the goalkeeper is or do you only have an inclination?

Klose: “It differs. Sometimes you sense him, a bit like a shadow. In other situations, things go so quickly that you just speculate, like the goalkeeper should now be moving towards the far post because the cross is going deep. So, you instinctively want to put your shot in the other direction.”

And then?

Klose: “Precision is always more important than power in shooting.”

When you started out playing at Kaiserslautern, you tried to copy your role model Olaf Marschall’s shooting technique. Did it work?

Klose: “Out of 10 dropkicks, Olaf hit nine perfectly. It was just two out of 10 with me. I watched how he positioned his shoulders, his hips, his foot when he hit the ball. It was all a fluid movement with him. Like him with the ball dropping, I turned my upper body fully towards goal, both shoulders level, in contrast to other strikers who were more skewed. My dropkicks looked a bit more like Olaf Marschall’s, but I still only hit two out of 10 perfectly [laughs].”

Is scoring goals mostly about instinct over technique?

Klose: “You need to have that nose for it to be able to sniff out where the ball will go, where there’s space between defenders. But you’re not just born with instinct. You can improve it through experience, by always analysing the opponents’ movements.”

Does a goalscorer always have to think just about scoring goals? Does he have to be selfish?

Klose: “I never played in a selfish way. I always tried to recognise where there was a greater probability of scoring a goal, whether I shoot myself or whether I can pass to play my strike partner into a better position.”

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Miroslav Klose on the art of goalscoring