Patrick Helmes

Patrick Helmes (born 1 March 1984 in Cologne) is a German football striker who plays for VfL Wolfsburg. Until September 2007 he was captain of Köln.

Club career

Early career

As a youth player, Helmes was active in local clubs in Freudenberg, Westphalia and Siegen. He joined 1. FC Köln in 1997, at the age of 13. However, he was regarded as too unstable and sent away in 2000. He subsequently went back to Sportfreunde Siegen, where he had already spent some time as a youth player. In the 2004–05 season, he scored 21 goals for his team in the third division, which made him top scorer of the league, helping his team to promotion to the second division.

Köln

He then joined his old club Köln again, where he made his Bundesliga debut in 2005 and scored his first goal in his second match, against rivals Bayer Leverkusen. After his club was promoted to the second division, Helmes became one of the most important players for his side, scoring 7 times in his first 5 games of the season and keeping Köln at the top of the table. However, he scored the last of those goals with a broken foot. The injury kept him out of the squad for the following 4 months, during which his team performed extremely poorly and lost all chances to return to the first division.

Patrick did not hide his intention of joining another team. Even though he confirmed that his departure to Bayer Leverkusen would follow the 2007-08 season, Köln coach Christoph Daum still named him captain of the squad in...
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