The regional leagues are in their winter break and the competition is tight in many places. But who are the best strikers in history? And are they still playing?
Simon Engelmann is a force to be reckoned with in the regional league. Although, this season he actually has to take a back seat. With 19 goals, his teammate Julian Ulbricht from SV Meppen is in first place in the Regionalliga Nord. Engelmann has “only” scored eight times. However, historically speaking, he is far ahead of the rest. In the current format of the Regionalliga, which has been in place since 2012, Engelmann has scored 189 goals. An incredible achievement that, let’s be clear, no one else has even come close to matching. Engelmann began his soccer career at VfL Oythe, where he made a name for himself in the 2009/2010 season with 25 goals in 30 Oberliga games. The left-footed player then played for various clubs, including Sportfreunde Lotte, SC Verl, and Rot-Weiß Oberhausen. Engelmann enjoyed his most successful spell at SV Rödinghausen, where he was the top scorer in the Regionalliga West several times: 19 goals in 2018/2019, 26 goals in 2019/2020, 29 goals in 2020/21, and 24 goals in 2021/2022. In the summer of 2020, he moved to Rot-Weiss Essen, where he continued his impressive scoring rate. Engelmann had been playing for SV Rödinghausen again since July 2023. Before his move to Meppen, Engelmann scored 29 goals for SVR in 57 competitive games over the past two years. That makes his goal ratio of eight goals (plus four assists) in 21 games even more impressive. Adam Jabiri follows in second place, having scored 151 goals for Wormatia Worms, Würzburger Kickers, and 1. FC Schweinfurt 05. However, he ended his career in the summer of 2024 and will no longer catch up with Engelmann.
The 35-year-old Marc-Philipp Zimmermann, on the other hand, is still playing. He is in third place with 135 goals for VfC Plauen, Carl Zeiss Jena, FSV Zwickau, and VfB Auerbach. However, he has not yet scored for Zwickau in the current season. In fourth place is Roman Prokoph, another familiar face from the west. He has scored 127 times for Sportfreunde Lotte, Hannover 96 II, 1. FC Köln II, Fortuna Köln, and Wuppertaler SV. He now plays for Kirchheimer SC in the Bavarian regional league. Sven Kreyer, on the other hand, could make another attempt, as he is currently playing for Ratingen 04/19 for promotion from the Oberliga Niederrhein to the Regionalliga West. He has scored 125 goals so far for VfL Bochum II, Rot-Weiss Essen, Viktoria Köln, and Rot-Weiß Oberhausen. This may continue in Ratingen next year.