Köln were rampant on Saturday, shooting down the bottom club SC Freiburg as if their coach, Marcus Sorg, had set up a particularly easy tin can alley in the Weihnachtsmarkt.

Christian Clemens and Lukas Podolski scored a brace each in a 4-0 win that lifted the Goats to 10th place in the table, close to the kind of place where dreams of Europe are legitimately being dreamt. And yet, "the sweat of fear" was on the brows of Köln officials, as Kicker magazine put it. Things are almost too good for comfort right now. Or perhaps one should be more precise: Lukas Podolski is.

The 26-year-old was the star of the show in the heaving RheinEnergie stadium, not just the best man on the pitch but on all pitches this past weekend. "He's playing the best football of his life," wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung, not unreasonably, and cited 13 goals in 14 Bundesliga starts, plus five assists. It's already his best season in the top flight and it's frightening to think where Köln would be without him: only eight out of 26 goals were scored without his direct involvement. The flip-side to his increased importance are new levels of anxiety, however. Podolski is out of contract in the summer of 2013. In days past, Köln were secure in the knowledge that the striker loved his home-town so much that a second move to another club was almost inconceivable; "Prinz Poldi" (Bild), was the assumption, could only function at one particular club in one particular city. A Köln version of Francesco Totti, if you will, with slightly less talent and self-awareness.

But things have changed. The Germany manager Joachim Löw ominously spoke of a "maturing process" recently and paved the way for plenty of speculation. Podolski himself has been deliberately ambivalent. The romantic notion of playing for your favourite team seems to be giving way to more pragmatic notions about the next, big contract and a need to play international club football.

The Köln sporting director Volke Finke certainly knows what time is. "We won't go into next season without extending his contract first, under no circumstances," said the 63-year-old. Köln can't afford to let their most valuable asset leave for free. Podolski, however, refuses to be pressurised. "Maybe they'll have to play in the reserves or put me in the stands then," he replied, a cheeky grin on his face. He's calling the shots right now.

And his agent Kon Schramm's phone has been ringing. Schalke 04 sporting director Horst Heldt openly admitted contact, dressing up his interest as a patriotic endeavour. "He has offers from 15 clubs, including from England and Turkey and so on," said Heldt. "But before he goes to Galatasary or somewhere else, everyone concerned should check whether he can be kept in the Bundesliga."

"Scheisse 04," the Köln fans chanted in reply to these advances. "Lukas Podolski can play in much better teams than Schalke," sneered Köln's Norwegian coach Stale Solbakken. But the topic won't go away in a hurry, even if Dortmund, the German champions, are reluctant to trade in the flat hierarchy of Jürgen Klopp's collective state for a monarchy ruled by the House of Poldi. "Lukas is an extraordinary player," said Klopp after the 1-1 draw with Kaiserslautern on Sunday, before twisting the knife. "But he is hyped up so much that it's hard for him to perform regularly. With his potential, he should be one of the Bundesliga's best strikers, if not the best – but he isn't. He can't perform often enough. Once every few weeks makes it too expensive for us."

"That's lovely from Mr Klopp," Podolski shot back. "Maybe he is sad because I've turned them down twice already. But I guess he's right. Now that they've finished last [in their group] in the Champions League, I'm really too expensive for them." The Borussia CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke, intriguingly, called Schramm to apologise on the behalf of his manager on Monday. "Poldi is a class act, that's also the view of Jürgen Klopp," Watzke said, explaining that the coach had been a little emotional after the disappointing Lautern result.

Klopp was nevertheless right in the sense that Podolski has never quite managed to live up to his tabloid billing; on the contrary his career seemed to owe more to a very fortunate timing than anything else. "The mercy of a late birth" was a controversial term popularised by former Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the 1980s, in relation to those Germans who were too young to become complicit in the crimes of the Nazis. Podolski, less controversially, simply enjoyed the mercy of an even later birth. Born in the Upper Silesian town of Gliwice, Poland, in 1985, the son of a football professional (Waldemar Podolski) and a handball player (Krystyna Podolska) was allowed to emigrate to West Germany as a two-year-old due to his father's German ethnicity. Less than two decades later, his date of birth was a decisive factor in his ascent to national hero, too. "Poldi", as the teenage striker from the city of Cologne became to be known, was one of only a handful of young players coming through just in time for Jürgen Klinsmann's 2006 World Cup revolution.

Podolski and Bayern's Bastian Schweinsteiger, who was incongruously seen as his soul-mate once, did deliver on the pitch, to be sure. But both were also able to take advantage of a distinct gap between the generations. There was simply no competition after the established thirtysomethings group of Michael Ballack and before the Müllers and Ozils, still hopeful adolescents at the time.

Poldi fitted the bill. He soon moved to the golden cage of Bayern Munich, were he spent most of time in suspended animation, on or off the pitch. He'd moan about his successive coaches not believing enough in him and reminisce about Cologne with the heart-felt sorrow of a slave who'd been upended and forced into exile. Only jaunts with the national team provided relief from the pain. Stationed out wide left, the quick and trigger-happy Podolski was the perfect player for Löw's "transition play" tactics. In his mind, he was a free-roaming shadow striker but Germany made his pitch smaller and gave him less space to get lost. "The touchline helps him with his sense of direction," one Germany staff member explained.

But there were still issues, there always were. "Capitano" Ballack got irate with his lack of running in a World Cup qualifier against Wales (April 2009) and got slapped down in response. Literally. When Löw refused to punish Podolski against the insubordination, it hastened the process of disenchantment between manager and captain.

Poldi, meanwhile, went back to Köln for €10m (£8.5m) and was hailed as the messiah. A measly return of three goals in the 2009-10 season was not enough to damage his popularity. "The team is not good enough for me," became the new narrative. Things picked up a little bit in 2010-11, when Podolski scored 13 goals but this season's Podolski looks – the occasional lapse into self-deluded laziness on the pitch apart – a very different beast. So Klopp is both right and wrong. The hype is still a problem but much less so. Despite his considerable wage demands, he's much less of a gamble than five years ago, when Bayern's bratwurst magnate Uli Hoeness bought into the sizzle but mostly got the wrong kind of brownish sausage in return.

On Tuesday night, his side are taking on Mainz 05 in a match that was rescheduled after the referee Babak Rafati tried to take his own life. Irrespective of the outcome, the main question will be the same. Where will he go? The fraught relationship between Köln and Schalke makes a move to the Royal Blues politically difficult. Bremen can't afford him, Dortmund apparently don't want to. "Abroad" looks the most likely destination but only after the Euros, where Podolski (95 caps) will try his hardest to add to his international following. No wonder that Löw is talking up the emancipation of his Prinz. Köln's anxiety is his joy.

Talking points

• Here's a nice tautology: Bayern are virtually "autumn champions" after a nervy 2-1 win over 10-man Stuttgart on Sunday night. It's the only title given out in December – but it's as fake as the "Dr" of disgraced politician Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who submitted a PhD thesis cobbled together from newspaper cuttings and parliamentary reports. Bayern, in any case, can now spend the winter holidays in the only acceptable space: at the top of table, "looking down on the opposition" (Philipp Lahm). A double digit defeat in next week's home match against Köln could still ruin the holidays but it won't come to that.

The game turned on a red card for the Stuttgart left-back Cristian Molinaro, dismissed for two fouls on Arjen Robben in the space of six minutes. The second yellow looked a little harsh but the Italian only had himself to blame. "It's hard enough against Bayern and I weakened the team," he confessed. The Swabians were still unhappy with Robben's exaggerated reaction, however. "Football is a contact sport we are not playing indoor Halma," said their sporting director Fredi Bobic in an unfair dig at the delightful board game. Bobic also offered to discuss his views with referee Manuel Gräfe "over a currywurst". The visitors had a bone to pick, too, however. "I don't understand why we stopped playing football after 70 minutes and simply hoofed it long," said Mario Gomez, the scorer of Bayern's two goals.

• No football after 71 minutes was a very good thing for VfL Wolfsburg, however. Felix Magath's men were 4-0 down and staring at humiliation after Marko Arnautovic had scored Werder Bremen's fourth of the day with 19 minutes to go. Luckily, the hosts had enough by then; Marcel Schäfer even pulled one back to make the defeat a tad more respectable. "This performance was not fit for the Bundesliga," said an increasingly frazzled Magath. He has already used 30 players this season and will probably use 60 more after overhauling the squad in the winter break.

• Markus Babbel will not renew his contract at Hertha, Bild reported after Schalke's 2-1 away win in the capital. In fact, he's said to be off after the cup game against Lautern next week. Private and personal reasons seem to have made up Babbel's mind to leave the Olympic stadium. One German Sky reporter linked him with a move to Liverpool as Kenny Dalglish's understudy but that kind of far-fetched hypothesis only proves that no one has the faintest idea what "The Babbler" (copyright Ronald Reng) will do next.

Results: Hertha 1-2 Schalke, Mainz 0-0 Hamburg, Köln 4-0 Freiburg, Bremen 4-1 Wolfsburg, Nürnberg 0-2 Hoffenheim, Augsburg 1-0 Gladbach, Dortmund 1-1 Kaiserslautern, Stuttgart 1-2 Bayern.

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