Claudio Pizarro’s top 5 Bundesliga moments

xwhatsappmailcopy-link

Claudio Pizarro – few men have played such a defining role in Bundesliga history as the Peruvian striker. Over the last 20 years with Bayern Munich, Werder Bremen and Cologne, he has fired his way into the record books and ensured his legendary status. To mark the goal machine’s 40th birthday, bundesliga.com looks back at five of Pizarro’s greatest Bundesliga moments.

1) The first of many

Pizarro made his first Bundesliga start all the way back on 12 September 1999. Enrique Iglesias’ “Bailamos” was top in the US charts and Bill Clinton was president, and it took a then 20-year-old Pizarro just 20 minutes to score his first Bundesliga goal with Werder Bremen – the first of 192 in the German top flight. Over the next two decades that has seen three further US presidents take office and Pizarro sign for Bremen three more times, the Peruvian has found the back of the net in the Bundesliga every calendar year for the last 20 years.

Watch: 20 years, 20 goals from Pizarro

His almost double ton of Bundesliga goals puts him fifth on the league’s all-time scoring chart, but among non-Germans he’s the outright leader. His 134th against Borussia Mönchengladbach on Matchday 9 of 2010/11 took him beyond Giovane Elber to the top of the standings. And just four days before hitting the big 40 he clocked up another milestone: his 450th Bundesliga appearance when he came off the bench for Werder at VfB Stuttgart. Only 25 players have ever played more Bundesliga matches than the Peruvian, but no other foreign player comes close to Piza’s total. His former Werder teammate Naldo is almost 100 behind him.

2) The perfect job interview

With 29 Bundesliga goals in his first two seasons with Werder, Pizarro quickly caught the eye of clubs around Europe. Fifteen of those came in the second half of 2000/01 alone, including two against Bayern. The latter of the two was scored in the 88th minute to give Bremen a 3-2 win in Munich – the club’s first triumph in almost five years.

Watch: Pizarro's goals against Bayern and Bremen

- © imago / Plusphoto

Three months later and Pizarro was a Bayern player, and it took him just six minutes to open his Bundesliga account for Bayern when he netted against Schalke on Matchday 2. He’d go on to score another 70 in the league for the record champions during his first six years there.

- © imago / Ulmer

3) The title-winning goal

Pizarro would add to those six seasons with another three between 2012 and 2015, taking his Bayern tally to 87 and making him the only player in Bundesliga history to score over 80 goals for two clubs (104 for Bremen, 87 for Bayern). During his nine Bundesliga campaigns with Bayern, the Peruvian lifted the Bundesliga Meisterschale six times.

- © imago / Chal v.d. Laage

4) Celebrations in both Munich and Bremen

Two cities 350 miles apart at opposite ends of the country, two teams with an intense rivalry, but on 30 March 2013 Bayern and Werder fans rose simultaneously to celebrate Pizarro’s efforts against Hamburg. The striker scored four and provided two assists in Bayern’s 9-2 demolition of HSV to move within a point of the title with seven games remaining.

5) The second, third and fourth coming

Pizarro has often spoken about being at home in both Bremen and Munich. He left the Bavarian capital in 2007 for a year out at Chelsea in England before returning home to Werder. Fans in Bremen queued to buy the new Pizarro kit as they welcomed the second coming of ‘Piza’ seven years after he first left. Just four games into his Bundesliga return he even scored against Bayern in a 5-2 win at the Allianz Arena – the last time the Green-Whites managed to beat the record champions.

There’d be a second spell back at Bayern, where he won the treble of Bundesliga, DFB Cup and UEFA Champions League in 2013, before third and fourth stints with Werder either side of a year at Cologne.

Click here for more Bundesliga news and features!