Germany's all-time top scorer Miroslav Klose at Lazio

The legendary striker Miroslav Klose, Germany’s all-time top scorer, was 37 years old but still showing his world class. He was playing for Lazio, although he came off the bench in most games that season.
A look back at the most successful years of Miroslav Klose’s career starts at Kaiserslautern, the first big club of his professional career. The forward made his Bundesliga debut in April 2000. Two years later he made his first real impact, scoring 16 goals for Kaiserslautern and finishing as the second-highest scorer of the 2001/2002 season. Meanwhile, he received his first call-up to the German national team and made his debut on 24 March 2001 in a friendly against Albania. He was eventually selected for the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan, where he finished as the tournament’s second-best scorer with five goals, all of them headers.
Two years later, the striker moved to Werder Bremen, where he lifted the DFB-Ligapokal in 2006. In the 2005/2006 season Klose scored 25 goals in 26 matches. His biggest successes at club level, however, came after his move to Bayern Munich. There Miroslav Klose won the Bundesliga twice, the DFB-Pokal twice, the DFB-Ligapokal and the DFB-Supercup. The striker was also in the squad when Bayern Munich finished as Champions League runners-up in 2009/2010.
At Lazio, Miroslav Klose won the Coppa Italia in 2012/2013. He had scored 57 goals in 161 matches for The Eagles, though he was used mostly as a substitute.
Klose’s greatest success came in 2014, when he won the FIFA World Cup with Germany. He became the all-time top scorer at World Cups with 16 goals across four consecutive tournaments, and his goal against Brazil in the semi-final made him the greatest scorer in World Cup history. He is also Germany’s all-time top scorer with 71 goals in 137 appearances. From the other three World Cups he played in, Klose also took home one silver and two bronze medals.
The striker will be remembered for his goal-scoring instinct and great positioning. His headers were crucial to Germany’s biggest successes of recent years. Klose was named Man of the Match in World Cup games on four occasions, finished as the top scorer at the 2006 World Cup and was twice selected for the World Cup All-Star Team (2002 and 2006). The forward could now help Lazio win the Europa League in what might be his final season as a professional footballer.

The record against Brazil

The goal that made Klose the leading scorer in World Cup history came on 8 July 2014. Germany beat the hosts Brazil 7-1 in the semi-final, and Klose’s strike in the 23rd minute was his 16th at World Cups, taking him past the Brazilian striker Ronaldo, who had held the record with 15. A few weeks after Germany lifted the trophy, in August 2014, Klose announced his retirement from international football.

Born Mirosław Marian Klose in Opole, Poland, on 9 June 1978, he went on to become the record scorer of the German national team.

How the 2015-16 season ended

The Europa League hopes did not last much longer. Lazio had already beaten Galatasaray 4-2 on aggregate in the round of 32, with Klose scoring the third goal in a 3-1 home win on 25 February 2016. In the round of 16 they met Sparta Prague. The first leg in Prague on 10 March finished 1-1, but Sparta won the return leg 3-0 at the Stadio Olimpico on 17 March 2016 and went through 4-1 on aggregate.

That season was Klose’s last at Lazio. On 15 May 2016, the final matchday of Serie A, he scored a penalty in a 4-2 home defeat by Fiorentina in his farewell game for the club. He did not join another team, and on 1 November 2016 he announced his retirement as a player, joining the coaching staff of the German national team on the same day.

Coaching became his second career. Klose was appointed coach of Bayern Munich’s under-17 side in May 2018 and later worked as an assistant to Hansi Flick with Bayern’s first team from 2020 to 2021. He then took charge of the Austrian club Rheindorf Altach in 2022, and in June 2024 he was appointed head coach of 1. FC Nürnberg in the 2. Bundesliga.