This feels like a striker’s World Cup. The list of players who inscribed their name in the early games was full of usual suspects: Lionel Messi, Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior. But the man who has snuck to the top of the charts with two deadly finishes — to add to a strike in the opening round of matches — is the lesser-known Deniz Undav of Germany.For him to wake up and see his own name up there must feel surreal. Undav was a late starter to international football and never had a sniff of it until the age of 27. Hearing his song being chanted by the Germany supporters behind the goal he blasted the ball into in Toronto blew him away. “I had to laugh,” he said.Undav at this World Cup looks every inch the perfect super sub. There is something cultish about that idea — the player who tends not to start but has the knack to appear later on with antennae twitching, ready to seize the day and alter the course of a match. In 56 minutes coming on from the bench over Germany’s games against Curacao and the Ivory Coast, he has a ridiculous five goal contributions — three goals and two assists.There does need to be deeper consideration of the super sub role in modern football. As the game has evolved, it is more common for coaches and managers to stress the equal importance of starters and finishers. Traditionally, players themselves have never felt that way. There is a natural status about the starting XI, but it is genuinely more open to interpretation than ever before whether that task remains notably superior.Who was lauded more for their afternoon’s work as Germany celebrated their victory, and the certainty of qualification? Was it Kai Havertz, who played up front from the start and toiled away looking for openings when the game was tight and tense? Or Undav, who entered stage left and stole the show? As far as Germany is concerned, both need to be content. Contemporary football requires it.Undav did not grow up as a member of German football’s elite and was playing in the third division with SV Meppen in his early twenties. Perhaps his long, not-so-scenic route to the national team underpins the sense that trusting him to be a major performer has not come easily to coach Julian Nagelsmann. There has been a swell of opinion in the build-up to this tournament pressing Undav’s case, including Jurgen Klopp’s, whose words always cause a stir.The Undav question became prickly last spring. Nagelsmann felt compelled to apologise for an assessment of Undav that was criticized as harsh — not least by the manager’s wife Lena. Essentially, Nagelsmann snapped after multiple questions about Undav and suggested he was best used as an impact player, a super sub if you will, against tired legs rather than as a starter expected to influence a cagier game state. It was perceived as a slight on the player’s limitations and did not go down well.