Sebastian Andersson is the man of the moment. The 27-year-old from Sweden has stepped up to the mantel with nine goals this season. He scored in the last home game against Sandhausen, before netting an 89^th-minute winner to beat MSV Duisburg on Sunday. As 1. FC Union Berlin prepare to face DSC Arminia Bielefeld on Friday, Christian Arbeit spoke with the club’s top scorer this season to find out his thoughts from the past few weeks. The full interview can be found on AFTV or in the club’s matchday magazine.

CA: Sebastian, as I already mentioned, it looks like a little bit like the beginning of the season. When you came here, and Philipp Hosiner left and Sebastian Polter was injured, the whole weight of scoring goals, of being the one striker everyone is focused on, was on your shoulders. Now, it is nearly the same. How does this feel?

SA: I don’t think I think so much about it, more than I know the chance is even bigger to play than when Polti is here. It feels like we play one or two games each or something like this. It’s more like this that I feel the chance is a little bit bigger. But I’m just happy to play of course. I’m just happy for my sake that I can play. Of course, for Polti, it’s very hard again to get an injury, so I’m sorry for his sake.

If you think about these possible situations: coming into a game when it’s already going on, or starting before it’s underway. Anything you like better? I guess you like to play the whole game the most. Even if it has to be like this, what do you like more?

100% I like more to start the game than be in the game or create the game from the beginning. When you come on from the bench, the game already has its own life. It’s sometimes that we are 1-0 down or 1-0 up … if we’re 1-0 up, sometimes you need to relax and be a little more defensive and be more safe than if we are 1-0 down. It has their own life. So it’s much easier to start from the beginning than to create the game on their own.

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If we look at the games against Duisburg and Sandhausen, it’s like we take the lead with a pretty early goal then we somehow lose the killer touch. We create chances but not so many. We miss out on the second goal. Sometimes it is you personally getting the ball hip high, and then don’t know how to take it. How come we kind of can’t kill them off?

I understand what you mean because Sandhausen and then Duisburg, it feels after we score the first goal we start to feel a bit passive to protect the three points. I think it’s everyone has in their head that three points is very important. It’s very close in the table and I think this is the problem, if you can say it like that. But we have to continue the way we started to play after 1-2 , we started to play a bit more. We have to work on this in our heads. The coach told us this, too.

So, 12 more chances to show that on the pitch! Let’s go a bit deeper and back into your personal life as a player, as a football player. At what age did you start to play football and why?

I was five years old and I think it was my dad who brought me to the training. It was just for fun in Ängelholms FF. So I was five or six, around that, and it was mostly because every dad wants his son to play football.

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When you start to be a professional player in Sweden … is this already in your mind that you maybe go to England, Germany or to other European countries?

This is the dream for most of the players, yes. The Swedish league is going up and getting better. Like England, Germany, and other leagues, are better, with more money and bigger. Every player wants to play in Europe, yes. This starts when you are small when you look at the big players like Ronaldo, yes. I think so, that players want to go abroad.

Then you first step outside of Sweden with Kaiserslautern. I guess you came with a lot of hope and ideas of what might happen. Personally, you score 12 goals in your first season there. As a team, you did not get it done on the pitch so Kaiserslautern had to go down to the third division. That wasn’t quite what you wanted, right?

I didn’t expect that, no. We were last in the table when I arrived, so I knew it was a tough way, but I thought we should turn it around. It was very hard and pretty negative around the players too. The stuff was pretty negative. Still, I liked it in Kaiserslautern, like the team and stuff like this. But it was tough, especially for the supporters when it is a big club. I hope the best for them and hopefully they come back up.