What do you say if you’ve just scored a hat-trick on your comeback after knee surgery and a five-month injury break, and 51,500 people are shouting your name in rhythmic intervals, proclaiming you as their deity? If you’re Eintracht Frankfurt’s very own Fußballgott Alexander Meier and you’ve just scored two of the three goals with your head, you say this: “It worked out OK today but I maintain that I’m essentially bad at heading.”

Bayern Munich beat Augsburg at the last with Thomas Müller penalty Read more

In another life, in another city, Meier – a 6ft 5in hunk with rock star hair and not one but two topknots – would not be able to leave the house for fear of being hugged and kissed to death by worshippers. Over the course of 11 years at the Commerzbank-Arena, however, the 32-year-old has developed an effective mechanism against the waves of Hessian mass adulation: he’s taken unpretentiousness to extreme levels, forever downplaying his own achievements – leading goalscorer in the league last season, fourth best goalscorer in Eintracht’s history with 104 league goals. “It doesn’t matter whether he’s scored one, three or 196 goals, he always shuffles through the stadium bowels slightly hunched, as if he’s bothered by something,” wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Meier, born outside Hamburg, is not one for big words. He’s like the guy next door,” the former Eintracht Frankfurt goalkeeper Oka Nikolov told Kicker.

He is not one for putting on a show on days off either. After training he mostly eats in the same Indian restaurant, just across the Main river, and always has the same dish – not too spicy, not too sweet. Meier, in other words, has the ordinary bloke routine down to a T. It has only brought him peace in his spare time though. The Eintracht fans, like all true believers, see right through it. Only the real messiah would pretend to be nothing special at all.

“To score three goals after five months out is not normal,” said the Frankfurt coach Armin Veh after his team’s 6-2 win over 1. FC Köln. “But then again, Alex Meier is not normal. He is an un-normal player, which makes it normal again, in a way.” The striker had looked good in training, good enough to warrant a first start since April – “He’s not someone you can bring on as a sub,” said Veh – but nobody could have known that he would find the net with his first touch of the game, a towering header between two Köln defenders, four minutes in. Meier scored Frankfurt’s third with a sublime, cushioned left-foot volley from a Haris Seferovic cross. Another header completed his hat-trick and the home side’s 6-2 win three minutes from the end. Veh rewarded him by substituting him late in the game, which brought the crowd to their feet and the “Fußballgott” chants. “A football fairytale,” exclaimed the Eintracht board member Axel Hellmann. “Madness,” said Meier’s team-mate Marco Russ. “I knew I probably wouldn’t have the energy to last 90 minutes,” said Meier, nonplussed and as if he had just come back from the gym. “I tried to get involved as well as possible.”

“Eintracht Frankfurt’s class act made the difference today. It’s disappointing for us,” lamented Peter Stöger, the Köln manager, before declaring himself the latest member of the Meier appreciation society: “Nevertheless, it’s great that he’s back.”

Seven points from four games have lifted Eintracht to fourth spot in the table, the sort of position the cautious, sometimes overcautiously led, club need to end up in if they are to gain ground on all the sides that have zoomed past them since their last glorious days in the early 90s. Meier alone will not be able to make it happen but, in truth, Veh’s side is no longer a one-man team. The acquisition of the young, pacy Dutch striker Luc Castaignos, from Twente, looks like a masterstroke already. The 22-year-old scored twice on Saturday but, most importantly, he provides balance as a counterweight to the Swiss international Seferovic, who played the role of “Watson to Meier’s Sherlock” – 11 Freunde – all by himself last season. Flanked by both men, Meier can drop a bit deeper, which suits his act as Germany’s best ghost striker, the Bundesliga’s very own (not that) Slender Man. Often, it feels as if he’s barely there but as soon as he makes his lurking presence felt, he scares defenders to death with his eerily efficient finishing.

On current evidence, Castaignos-Meier-Seferovic is one of the most potent attacking tridents in the league and Veh, a genial man who never knowingly overanalyses the game, has created the perfect platform for them with three players who are essentially central midfielders behind them. Few are better at riding the crest of a wave than Veh, who is back at his second spell at a club that could well be his spiritual home. Frankfurt is a decidedly medium-paced city of banks and commerce but it likes its football fast and furious, with a touch of capriciousness. With Veh at the helm and Meier, the extraordinary Mr Extra Ordinary in frightening form again, the Eagles could well be flying high in 2015-16.

Talking points

• Gladbach and Stuttgart are the unlikely Kellerkinder (basement boys) after losing their respective fourth games in a row. While the Swabians struggle to come to terms with Alex Zorniger’s new system – they didn’t have much of a system in recent years - the Foals were unrecognisable in their 3-0 home defeat by Hamburger SV, gifting the northerners the goals and playing without any sense of confidence throughout. A crisis meeting without the coach, Lucien Favre, and the sporting director, Max Eberl, before their Champions League debut in Seville was supposed to help. “It was a good talk,” said Granit Xhaka. “We didn’t blast each other but it was pointed out clearly that we need to help each other again on the pitch. We need to run until we’re puking.”

• Markus Weinzierl looked blue in the face, too, on Saturday, but for other reasons. Douglas Costa had run into Markus Feulner deep into injury time in the Allianz Arena and, to everybody’s astonishment, the referee’s assistant Robert Kempter signalled for a foul. Penalty, Thomas Müller, 2-1, one of those terribly fortunate Bayern wins that only Bayern are capable to pull off regularly. The referee, Knut Kircher, one of the better ones in the business, later apologised in front of every available camera: “It wasn’t a penalty. Our perception and interpretation were wrong, unfortunately. Augsburg won’t get any points for that but we’re sorry.” Weinzierl, however, was inconsolable. “We’ve been screwed over,” he cried. Bayern saw things a little differently, naturally, insisting that they had been up all afternoon – deep in the Augsburg half, with the ball – to get lucky.

Luckily, Kempter’s hallucination did at least not put Bayern top as Borussia Dortmund won as well, 4-2 at Hannover, to record the best start to a league campaign and lead the table for another week.

• Darmstadt is famous for its Art Nouveau architecture but SV Darmstadt 98 don’t want you know that. The newly promoted Lilies, back in the top flight for the first time since Aston Villa were the best team in Europe, have positioned themselves as unashamed brutalists, out to annoy the bigger sides with underdog no-name anti-football and their rickety old ground. During their 1-0 away win away to Leverkusen, however, their fourth unbeaten match of the season, it was Roger Schmidt’s team who “said goodbye to football,” as their coach put it later. The visitors had not only succeeded in “ruining Leverkusen’s afternoon a little” (98 manager Dirk Schuster) but also played some very decent stuff on the break. One such venture into enemy space led to the winning goal by Lieutenant Sulu, sorry: captain Aytac Sulu. Can Schuster’s enterprise live long and prosper amid all the stars? The 47-year-old was certainly beaming on Saturday.

Results Gladbach 0-3 Hamburger SV, Hannover 2-4 Dortmund, Bayern 2-1 Augsburg, Ingolstadt 0-0 Wolfsburg, Frankfurt 6-2 Köln, Hertha 2-1 Stuttgart, Leverkusen 0-1 Darmstadt, Hoffenheim 1-3 Bremen, Schalke 2-1 Mainz.