He might not have made much of an impact in the Premier League, but the West Ham United misfit certainly left a lasting impression on a footballer taking the English game by storm at Newcastle.
The Hammers can only dream of emulating Newcastle’s outstanding track record with centre-forwards.
While West Ham look to bring in around £20 million during the winter window, Niclas Fullkrug is the latest in a long line of strikers to arrive in East London amid lofty expectations. With three goals and eleven starts over 16 months, Fullkrug seems destined to go down in memory alongside Sebastien Haller, Gianluca Scamacca, Simone Zaza and many more who promised much but delivered very little.
But if West Ham United have become a graveyard housing the corpses of once-highly-regarded number nines, the opposite is true of Newcastle.
Alexander Isak, Callum Wilson and now Nick Woltemade; three of the last seven strikers signed by the Magpies have played the best football of their careers in the black and white stripes.
Speaking of Woltemade, the moustached marvel of Tyneside owes his staggering rise to prominence partly to the lessons he learned from none other than Fullkrug back home in Germany.
Newcastle’s Nick Woltemade learned so much from West Ham United’s Niclas Fullkrug
Before bursting onto the scene with Stuttgart, a teenage Woltemade spent some time training alongside, and learning from, West Ham’s injury-hit number eleven at Werder Bremen.
The club where Fullkrug, with 16 in the 2022/23 campaign, enjoyed his most productive Bundesliga campaign in front of goal.
Quality of the sort running through the veins of Woltemade cannot be taught. Yet, while he eased through the reserve-team ranks thanks to his extraordinary raw talent, the late-blooming Fullkrug is an example of what can be achieved with hard work, dedication and a refusal to accept defeat.
Combine that sublime innate quality with a fierce mentality, and you’ve got quite the striker on your hands.
Why do you think Niclas Fullkrug failed?
“I progressed straight through all the youth teams at Werder Bremen. Technically, I was among the best. I didn’t have to push myself. And that turned out to be a problem when I joined the first team at 17,” Woltemade tells Stern.
“I thought I’d just carry on as always and prove myself among the professionals, just like in all the teams before. It took me a while to understand that being a Bundesliga player requires much more than just talent.
“Luckily, I had ‘Fulle’ by my side. He was my mentor in the team.
“He shaped me as a player. He turned me into a hard worker. He took me along to his special training sessions.
“After every team session, Fullkrug would practice finishing. Dozens of crosses from all directions, and then shooting at goal. On top of that, there were extra sessions in the weight room.
“I realised that you have to toughen yourself up for what awaits you in the Bundesliga.”
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Woltemade has already outscored Fullkrug in the Premier League
Unfortunately for West Ham, a 32-year-old Fullkrug no longer appears to possess the same thrust as the one who racked up an impressive tally of goals in Werder Bremen green or the yellow and black of Dortmund.
With five, Woltemade has nearly doubled his old mentor’s Premier League tally despite arriving a year later. A 6ft 4ins giant of a centre-forward with the velvet-toed touch of a young Dimitar Berbatov, few expected Woltemade to make good on his £69 million price-tag but his dazzling start at Newcastle suggests he will one day be worth every single penny.
The same cannot be said of Fullkrug, now 32 and destined to leave West Ham for a fraction of the £27 million fee they paid back in 2024.
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