Mandy Islacker now plays for VfB Stuttgart. Born in Essen, she immediately receives a lot of praise from her new club.
Mandy Islacker has to bury one record. She has a good chance of at least being shortlisted for another. With her move from Kreisliga club Viktoria Köln to Oberliga club VfB Stuttgart, the granddaughter of Rot-Weiss-Essen legend Franz “Penny” Islacker has lost her chance of winning the “goal scorer’s crown for all” for the 7th division for the time being. The 35-year-old striker scored 58 times in twelve games for Cologne. Now she is starting from scratch again in Baden-Württemberg.
There is a good two-and-a-half hour train journey between her home in Cologne and her new club. That is probably the other record that Islacker could claim for herself. She will have to travel this distance for training and matches. “The VfB Stuttgart project has convinced me that something is being created here,” she said before the first training session last Tuesday.
Her contract will initially run until the end of the season. “From our point of view, I can say that she would be very happy to stay at VfB for longer and help us achieve our goals,” Stuttgart’s sporting director Sascha Glass told fussball.de. Glass was Islacker’s coach during her time at 1. FC Köln, her last stop before the end of her professional career. “Mandy is one of the most professional players I’ve had the pleasure of working with – and she still has the athletic ability to play in the women’s Bundesliga again at any time,” he said.
The promotion race is tight
This is where VfB Stuttgart wants to be in the long term. First, however, promotion to the Regionalliga Süd is the goal. After the first half of the season, the Swabians are in first place in the Oberliga and have a two-point lead over SC Sand II.
In the second half of the season, Stuttgart can now look forward to Mandy Islacker’s goals. No matter which league she plays in, the striker has a knack for scoring goals. Born in Essen, she scored in the Bundesliga. For MSV Duisburg, SGS Essen, FC Bayern Munich, BV Cloppenburg, 1. FFC Frankfurt and 1. FC Köln, she scored a total of 146 times in 282 games. In addition to two Bundesliga goalscoring crowns, her CV also includes winning the 2015 Champions League with Bayern.