Opposition Check: VfL Wolfsburg

Review. Bayern hunters. Runner-up. And then also winner of the DFB Cup. That was Wolfsburg’s reality in the 2014/15 season. A then 23-year-old Kevin De Bruyne amazed the Bundesliga – the Belgian scored a total of 31 points, including 21 assists. His main buyer at the time: striker Bas Dost with 16 goals. Incidentally, both scored a brace each in the 4-1 win against Bayern Munich. In addition to the runner-up and cup triumph, the Wolves also made it to the knockout round of the Europa League, but were defeated by SSC Napoli in the quarter-finals. Nevertheless, everything seemed ready for a glorious future for the Volkswagen Club from the Autostadt.

Things were supposed to be different. In the following season there was only an eighth place in the table and the European football was missed. In 2017 and 2018, Wolfsburg even had to go into relegation, but they barely jumped off the cliff of relegation to the 2nd Bundesliga: First, the Green-Whites prevented themselves from going into the second division in their Lower Saxony duel with Eintracht Braunschweig, and then repeated the feat the following season with victory over Holstein Kiel. The Wolves then stabilised again, all three following seasons were able to finish in European positions, and in the 2021/22 season the team from the Autostadt even played in the Champions League again. Since then, however, things have been going wrong in the league again, and last year Wolfsburg clearly missed their goals with a 12th place finish.

This season, too, things are going completely differently than those responsible had imagined. In March, VfL parted ways with coach Nico Kovac. He was followed by Ralph Hasenhüttl, the Austrian was recently able to celebrate two victories with his team and thus at least reduce the fear of relegation. But Wolfsburg is not yet saved three match days before the end of the season. Instead, it’s still all on the line for VfL three match days before the end of the 2023/24 season. Lower Saxony is currently in 12th place, but definitely still has to look in the rear view mirror. A game for Wolfsburg next Saturday (May 4th/3:30pm) that is still of enormous importance for them. For the Lilies, it’s all about saying goodbye to the Bundesliga with their heads held high, so they want to score a point or two in the remaining games. Before the game in which the hosts could finally save themselves, we take a closer look at VfL Wolfsburg.

“That feeling of winning is something you can get addicted to. And that’s also the reason why you can never completely stop playing football. It’s hard to compare that with anything else,“ said Ralph Hasenhüttl in an interview with Sky, after his first win as the new head coach of VfL Wolfsburg. The 56-year-old previously took a break of around one and a half years as a trainer after being dismissed from Southampton in November 2022. After his time in England, the Austrian considered quitting his coaching career entirely because he “couldn’t see any more games.” He had become somewhat over-saturated, but now he is back on the Bundesliga coaching bench.

But when taking a closer look at the coaching staff at VfL Wolfsburg, the alert reader stumbles upon the name Hasenhüttl twice. Ralph brought his son Patrick with him to Lower Saxony as an assistant coach. “We always talked about how it would be nice to work together someday. He was always the most critical observer of our games. In general, it was important to me that I had people around me who knew my path and what made me tick. That’s what actually interested me the most,” says father Ralph.

At VfL, the Hasenhüttl family’s first priority is to stay in the league, which could already be mathematically determined next weekend. It’s no secret that Ralph Hasenhüttl would prefer to look further up in sport – just a look at his CV is enough: As a player, the former striker won four Austrian championships, the neighboring country’s cup three times and rose to the top with 1. FC Köln Bundesliga. He also has some successes in his coaching career; Hasenhüttel’s career began on the sidelines in Unterhaching. With VfR Aalen he achieved promotion to the 2nd Bundesliga in 2012, and with FC Ingolstadt he was even promoted to the Bundesliga three years later.

Hasenhüttl has taken continuous steps in his career. After his stint in Ingolstadt, the Austrian went to Leipzig and led the Saxons into the Champions League for the first time in the club’s history. In the spring of 2018 he ended his time in Leipzig at his own request, and around six months later he took over FC Southampton.

Now the 56-year-old is in Lower Saxony at VfL Wolfsburg, the batteries have been recharged and he is really keen on the task. The former striker also took advice from Jürgen Klopp: “(He) once said to me: As a coach, I miss things that I simply don’t have time for. And when he is no longer a coach, he will miss this job. Both together don’t work. You should always try to feel comfortable in the moment you are in.”

The great strength of VfL Wolfsburg remains their willingness to run and their intensity – everything that was the case in the first half of the season. With 24,561 intensive runs, the Lower Saxony team is in first place in the league-wide statistics, while Eintracht Frankfurt in second place has around 900 fewer runs. In the sprints, VfL is only topped by the promoted team from Heidenheim; the Wolves have already recorded 7,657 sprints.

By the way, these strong numbers are not entirely surprising; Wolfsburg’s statistics in these areas were already at an absolute top level last season. It will be exciting to see whether VfL can maintain this strength under Ralph Hasenhüttl, who has only been in office since March.

It was about 55 meters to the Darmstadt goal, goalkeeper Marcel Schuhen was relatively far in front of his goal, so Jonas Wind took heart and just held on. The ball landed a good half a meter next to the goal – lucky from the SVD’s point of view. Wind could have entered the list of the longest goals in the Bundesliga in the first half of the season against the sports club. It wasn’t enough on this cold December day, but Wind still scored the assist for the Wolves‘ 0-1 away win.

The 25-year-old has made a name for himself in his first two years in the Bundesliga since the Dane arrived in Lower Saxony from FC Copenhagen in January 2022. The attacker has played for the Danish capital club since the U13 level, grew into a European attacking talent and made it into the Danish national team. In Copenhagen, Wind was not only able to celebrate personal success, he also managed to immortalise himself with his team. In the 2018/19 and 2021/22 seasons he won the Danish championship with FC Copenhagen.

Wind and his VfL Wolfsburg are a long way away from the German championship, but it was in this first half of the season that the Dane showed what qualities he has. After six games, the striker had already scored seven goals, something no VfL player had achieved before. “I’m just standing right most of the time,” said Wind in the fall of 2023 when asked what his recipe for success was.

This calendar year, scoring goals is much more difficult for the 25-year-old; Wind was only able to score one goal in 2024, a week and a half ago Wind scored in a 1-0 win against VfL Bochum. But despite his goal drought, Wind is proving to be important for Wolfsburg; with eight assists already, the Dane is the Wolves‘ strongest assist provider.

Privately, Jonas Wind is considered to be a very quiet guy; the FAZ portrayed him last fall as a player and person who seems like a “nice young man” who “lives next door, plays football quite well in the national league and enjoys his life.” Maybe that’s exactly his secret: the calm that he radiates and that he gets in the VfL Wolfsburg environment.