It’s not surprising to hear that when Union Berlin striker Sören Brandy travels up to Duisburg to take on his former club next week, he has nothing but good memories of the place. He’s a nice guy, after all. Spending a solitary season with Duisburg before moving to Berlin, he ‘left in friendship’, the club accepting that players would not want to play third division football after a licence dispute saw them demoted.

It was at Duisburg that Brandy debuted his famous flapping bird goal celebration. It was an instant hit and became his trademark. “I played the PlayStation all the time with Kevin Wolze, he still plays for Duisburg. FIFA was, of course, what we played together. That’s where it came from.” Brandy’s first year at Union almost saw him take flight as he flapped his arms on eleven occasions in the league, a career best thus far. Asked if he likes any other celebration, he says Cristiano Ronaldo’s ‘confident’ specialty: “But I have mine, so for me, mine is the best.”

Brandy hasn’t been given the opportunity to play as a centre-forward this season, his favoured position, but doesn’t particularly care where he’s deployed as long as the team win. “I’m something between a striker and a midfielder on the right side. I like most of all to play as a striker but for me it’s important to be successful with the team. Of course, I’d like to have a few more goals. I had a difficult time from October to January. I didn’t play much so it’s not good for me to have three goals. I hope that I can score a couple more.”

Not that his focus is obscured by a desire to find the back of the net. He likes to create as well as score. “When I play on the right side I always talk with the guy on the left to change positions in the game for a few minutes to confuse markers. I think it’s better for me to play on the right because I like to run to the byline and put the ball in the middle. It’s easier for me to do this than cut inside like Arjen Robben would.”

A childhood Borussia Dortmund supporter (“I had a yellow room, all stuff with posters and everything”), Brandy has a keen interest in football when he’s not on the pitch himself. One doesn’t need to have leanings towards Dortmund to admire the football they’re playing. While he’s not behind Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, he supports every German team competing in Europe. Bayer Leverkusen, who face Villarreal in the last 16 of the Europa League, are bossed by his former coach Roger Schmidt. Another former coach, Andre Schubert, is chasing a Champions League place with Borussia Monchengladbach, who crashed out of this season’s competition in the ‘Group of Death’.

Both former Paderborn coaches (it’s not only Mainz who produce outstanding managers), Brandy sees the pair going to the very top. They were part of the reason he had ‘four amazing years’ at Paderborn. Speaking a day before Sascha Lewandowski stepped down as manager due to acute fatigue syndrome, he called him a ‘really good coach, very strategical’. Assistant coach André Hofschneider has temporarily taken charge of the side.

Union are coming off the back of a defeat at Greuther Fürth on Tuesday. It was their second successive defeat on the road. Despite only one win in their last six away games, Brandy is not concerned. The 30-year-old is looking forward to bouncing back against FSV Frankfurt on Saturday. “It’s good to have our next game on Saturday so there’s no time to think about it. Plus, we’ll be playing at home with our own fans behind us so it will be a better game for us. With our fans it’s something special in the second division. They’re amazing, they support us all the time even when we’re playing poor. In tough situations our fans can help us get back in the game. Hopefully we can start the game better than Tuesday.”

Victory over FSV would be Union’s fourth home win in a row. Contrasting form. They are a different beast at the Stadion An der Alten Försterei, made all the more formidable by recent signings Jakob Busk, Felix Kroos and former Middlesbrough defender Emanuel Pogatetz. They’ve all slotted straight into the starting line-up.

Nine points above the relegation zone and fourteen points below the promotion places, Brandy is aiming for a higher finish than their 11th place position but makes it clear that showing heart, desire and passion for the shirt is the most important thing the players can do. “I think we don’t have to look at the first three places in the table.

“There isn’t a lot of pressure for us to go up or to go down but for us we still want to move up in the table. Eleventh isn’t what we want to have in the end. We want to win as many points as possible.”