How can it be that the unlikely challenger in the battle for the illustrious Golden Boot as top goalscorer at this World Cup did not cut it in the Premier League?After two games each, only Lionel Messi (five goals), Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland (four each) have done better than Deniz Undav’s tally of three for Germany.Even the star names above Undav — all without assists — cannot compete with his astonishing record of a goal involvement every 10 minutes or thereabouts (three goals and two assists during 56 minutes on the pitch).Get free access to the most comprehensive World Cup coverage in The Athletic appUndav’s contributions have all come as a substitute, with the 29-year-old coming off the bench in Germany’s first two group matches against Curacao and Ivory Coast, hence the massive disparity in playing minutes. Messi’s hat-trick against Algeria and double against Austria, for example, have been spread over 170 minutes of game time (meaning a goal contribution every 34 minutes).Under the radar and underrated have been familiar themes on Undav’s football journey heading into Germany’s last group fixture against Ecuador on Thursday. With a place in the knockout stages already assured for coach Julian Nagelsmann’s side, there will be further opportunities for him to shine deeper into this tournament and to keep defying odds and expectations.Substitute Undav equalises against Ivory Coast on June 20. Twenty minutes later, he got the winner too (Cole Burston/Getty Images)Undav was released at 14 years of age by top German club Werder Bremen, where he was regarded as being too small.He spent hours watching videos of Thierry Henry and the Brazilian Ronaldo when he was growing up, pretending to be them in kickabouts with friends. Yet following in their footsteps by playing at the very highest level seemed destined to remain a mere fantasy when, at 17, Undav was working as a factory machine operator to supplement modest wages with TSV Havelse in Germany’s lower leagues.Matthias Limbach, who discovered Undav when he was Havelse’s technical director, described him to The Athletic in 2022 as “a little, chubby player — a little lazy on the pitch”.A chance for Undav to break into the big time arrived in 2020. Aged 23, he moved from SV Meppen and Germany’s third division to the second tier in Belgium with Union Saint-Gilloise. The Brussels-based club had been identified as a sleeping giant of Belgian football when, in 2018, Brighton & Hove Albion’s owner-chairman Tony Bloom became majority owner (he now has a minority stake there).USG were on the up, and so was Undav. He spearheaded successive first-place finishes in the regular seasons of the second and top divisions and qualification for the Champions League (via second place in Belgium’s title play-offs in 2021-22), with 42 goals across 59 league appearances. In his final few months at USG, Undav was officially a Brighton player, signing in January 2022 for a fee of around £6million and returning immediately to Brussels on loan for the rest of that campaign.