Lukas Podolski is to Germany as David Beckham is to England. They are both members of golden generations of their National Teams. They are both pretty good at generating personal wealth. They both have their own documentaries.
For me, the big difference between the two footballers was that I knew very little about Lukas Podolski. So everything I learned in the Netflix documentary Poldi was a surprise.
Lukas Podolski’s playing career
Most surprising to me was that Lukas was an immigrant from Poland to Germany. His parents managed to migrate from economically depressed Poland to Germany when he was 2 years old. He dribbled a football with him everywhere, and his goal was always to become a pro footballer.
Lukas came up through the FC Koln academy and debuted with the senior team at age 17. In 2004, at age 19, he debuted for Die Mannschaft (the German NT) at the same time as Bastian Schweinsteiger. Lukas and his left foot went to WC 2006, where he was named Best Young Footballer of the tournament, beating out both Messi and Ronaldo.
There are coach and player interviews throughout to praise Lukas’ skills on the pitch.
After WC 2006 and such an exciting start to his career, Lukas moved from FC Koln to Bayern Munich. But his career began to fade and he never achieved superstar status. He returned to FC Koln. He was still a starter at WC 2010, where Germany placed third. Then he went to Arsenal. But by WC 2014, which Germany won, Podolski mostly did not see the international field. From there he became a journeyman, playing in Italy, Turkey, Japan, and finally ending his playing career in Poland, at his father’s club Górnik Zabrze.
Lukas Podolski off the pitch
The film spends a lot of time with Lukas’ family, perhaps to show how Polish he really is. How important money is to him. How his German wasn’t good enough as a kid. How he bought his dad his first car.
We also learn that Lukas had no interest in girls but married the first girl he dated. She talks about how little time he spent with her and their children.
And then the film shows us his many business interests. His Ice Cream United shop. His Mangal Doner kebab shops. In his last year of playing, he buys the Polish club he is playing for, and he selects the merch for the store and the fabrics for the apparel.
Besides talking about himself, Lukas shows a surprising amount of skin and glutes in the film in bath, bed, therapy, and sumo wrestling scenes.
In conclusion
One constant thread throughout the film is that Lukas has a lot of ambivalence about retiring from playing. It appears that he doesn’t decide until the end of the 2025 season, at which point, he decides to play one more year. I assume the filmmakers didn’t want to follow him for another year, so they returned later to finish the film. They did it pretty seamlessly, but I felt a little sorry for them. Lukas probably opened a few more shops while they were waiting.
6 Soccer Movie Mom Rating = 6
Resources:
- Released: 2026-06-04 (Netflix)
- 1 hr 34 mins
- In German and Polish with English sub-titles
- IMDB
- Directors: Nicolas Berse , Simone Schillinger , Kai Sehr
- Stars: Lukas Podolski
- Watch the Trailer in German
- BTF Website and Signature Studios website
