Huddersfield Town’s other new German striker Michael Hefele loved his Rochdale cameo – and sees no reason why David Wagner’s side can’t keep pushing for glory on two fronts.
Collin Quaner, the club’s £500,000 January transfer window arrival from Union Berlin, marked his debut with a 42nd-minute opener in the FA Cup fourth-round win.
Then eyebrows were raised when head coach Wagner brought on centre-back Hefele for forward Elias Kachunga - and pushed the former Dynamo Dresden man into attack.
Any fears that Hefele would be left scratching his head at the ‘wrong’ end of the pitch were proved to be unfounded as he sealed a cracking away win and a place in Monday evening’s fifth-round draw (Town are ball number 11) with two neat finishes.
A header from Aaron Mooy’s free-kick and shot from Quaner’s tee-up followed Izzy Brown’s well-taken 66th-minute penalty.
Popular Hefele enjoyed the reaction of the 3,471 travelling fans in a 7,431 crowd at the Crown Oil Arena.
And while the 26-year-old says remaining in the Championship play-off places is the number one priority, he wants to live the FA Cup dream too.
“I don’t think it is hard to balance priorities – we have a big squad and you saw the boss rotate a lot and we won very well, 4-0, so it doesn’t matter who plays,” said the summer signing.
“It was a dream to play in the FA Cup. I love these ugly games and I’m very proud to score here. I’m really pleased for the whole squad.”
Hefele has sometimes been pushed up front late in games, but admits he was as surprised as anyone when he was asked to do a frontline job for 45 minutes.
“When the boss says ‘play up front’, I play up front,” he said.
“I like it very much – normally it is just for the last five minutes or something when we need a goal or we play long ball.
“I was a little bit surprised to do it for 45 minutes but I thought ‘I like this, just keep running as much as you can and help the team and get us into the next round.’
“I think it was a clever change because the pitch was not a football pitch, it was a very bad pitch and we couldn’t play like we want to play with short passes along the floor so we changed our game, we played long ball and took our chances.
“We have a good team spirit and some great lads in the team and we have a very good dressing room with jokes and banter and that is the most important thing.
“We are greedy for success.”
