On Saturday in Dortmund there was once again a lot of talk about Lars Ricken, who now plays a rather quiet role at Borussia Dortmund.

The man, who was once celebrated as a great talent, is now the director of the youth academy at BVB and is still an icon.

Since Saturday, a particularly well-suited heir has stood out from the long list of young Dortmund professionals.

Youssoufa Moukoko brought back Ricken's sweet memories in the 3-0 victory over VfL Bochum when he created a copy of the memorable moment that made Ricken an eternal hero on a Wednesday evening in May 1997.

At that time, at the age of 20, he scored with a chip ball from almost 30 meters to make it 3-1 against Juventus Turin and decided the Champions League final for BVB.

Moukoko wasn't born when that famous goal came, but of course he knows the footage of that moment.

When asked whether he had taken Ricken's action in his 3-0 win over VfL as a model, he replied: "Yes, you can say."

With this goal, Moukoko had only decided a "small district derby", and yet this goal was more than just a nice and important goal that flushed a few pictures from the past to the surface.

The clever long-range shot led to a moment when even the doubting faction could come to the conclusion that Moukoko should be given a place in the World Cup squad.

Especially since the young striker had previously scored to make it 1-0 and played excellently before being substituted after 82 minutes.

"I'm looking forward to thursday"

After his many strong performances in recent weeks, Moukoko belonged to the group of 55 players who were considered German World Cup participants.

After Timo Werner's foot injury, it is hard to imagine that the Dortmund striker will not be part of national coach Hansi Flick's squad.

"I'm looking forward to Thursday," said Moukoko, alluding to the day of the squad nomination at the DFB and floating: "The performance will decide in the end." The one game that Dortmund will play next Tuesday (6:30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for Bundesliga and on Sky) in Wolfsburg, but will no longer be decisive for Flick's choice.

The past few weeks have been too impressive for that, and with Niklas Füllkrug there is only one more classic center forward to consider.

In the end, both will probably be nominated.

Moukoko has the great advantage that he has already shown this season how well he works as a backup player.

Between the second and seventh match day Anthony Modeste was in Dortmund's starting eleven, Moukoko was substituted on six times, usually only played a few minutes, but shaped these games with two goals and two assists.

In the five games since then, in which he was on the field from the start, he only failed to score in the 2-0 defeat at Union Berlin, scoring four times and providing the assist for two more goals.

"It's just going well," said Moukoko and explained his huge development steps of the past few weeks with his physical condition.

"Last year I was often injured, if you're injury-free, everything comes by itself," said the teenager, and exactly this lightness is another argument for Moukoko.

Hard work, discipline, diligence, responsibility and mentality are constantly being talked about in football today;

Moukoko has actually made great strides in these areas recently.

At the same time, however, he has retained that Lukas Podolski-like light-heartedness that Lars Ricken lost at some point after he pondered about “VIP boxes”, “guys in pinstripes” and “non-stop profiteering” in commercials.

Moukoko, who turns 18 on the day of the World Cup opening game, just kicks and has fun without playing frivolously.

"He made a huge step in the whole game," said Terzic this Saturday, when Moukoko not only scored two Bundesliga goals for the first time, but also showed what is probably his most mature performance for Dortmund.

The number of his wrong decisions in passing around the opponent's penalty area has decreased rapidly.

His behavior when disrupting the opponent's play structure improves, as does his stability in offensive tackles.

How he prevailed against the almost two meter tall Ivan Ordets before his first goal was impressive.

His hard left shot had an almost unpredictable trajectory.

And Moukoko's rapidly growing self-confidence was evident in every action.

After these two goals, at the age of 17 years and 350 days he is the youngest player to have ever scored ten goals in the Bundesliga, he now leads the club's top scorer list with six goals this season, Moukoko is "extremely talented and wants to improve", said Terzic, who said recently that he doesn't communicate with any other player so much.

On the one hand, that's a sign of appreciation, but on the other hand, it also shows that the coach believes he can make particularly great progress here, from which the whole team then benefits.

The native of Cameroon has long been seeded number nine at BVB, while Modeste has to be content with the role of substitute.

At the World Cup, however, Moukoko would certainly be satisfied if he could play a few minutes from time to time.