Moritz Volz

The next time someone complains that all professional football players are spoilt and overpaid, spare a thought for Moritz Volz. In a world of Range Rovers and bling, the down-to-earth Fulham defender prides himself on being different.

For a start, he rides a folding bicycle to home matches and, if that was not enough to mark him out in his chosen profession, the 23-year-old German spends his spare time taking A levels and watching Sunday League football.

“I absolutely love watching Sunday League games,” he writes on volzy.com, his website. “You always get really hardcore players who come out with all these ridiculous shouts: ‘Clean it up’, ‘different gravy’, ‘back door’. It was really making me laugh and it made me realise that I need to integrate some of this terminology into my game. I have to say my absolute favourite from last Sunday was ‘all day long’ — I am having that one for sure.”

Volz signed for Arsenal at 16 and learnt his trade alongside promising young players from all around the world under the expert eye of Arsène Wenger in North London. When he failed to make the grade at Arsenal three years ago, he was sent on loan to Wimbledon before he found his spiritual home at Craven Cottage.

The German is famous in West London for his quirky sense of humour and his obsession, shared with many other Germans, for David Hasselhoff, but things got serious when he lost his place again at right back to Liam Rosenior at the start of the season.

Undeterred, Volz devoted more time to revising for the biology A-level exam that he is taking in January until Chris Coleman, the manager, asked him to reinvent himself as an all-action midfield player in September.

“I’ve been in the lab this week,” Volz said. “I was doing an enzyme-based experiment at different pH levels and concentrations — there were a lot of very long words involved, which I can’t remember.”

As well as excelling as an emergency midfield player this season and keeping up with his homework, Volz has also found time to fulfil his duties as the Professional Footballers’ Association representative at Craven Cottage and to act as the unofficial cheerleader for the squad. Two weeks ago he invited his team-mates to a house- warming party at his home in Fulham — two years after he moved in.

“I had lots of friends round — a good mix of people,” he said. “I have to mention Carlos Bocanegra. I know it was a few days from Hallowe’en and maybe that’s why he dressed up a bit, but why he came as a Mexican gardener, I’ll never know.”