21st matchday
Wolfsburg (dpa) – Max Kruse and Florian Kohfeldt grinned at each other after the final whistle. With the prominent newcomer in the starting eleven, VfL Wolfsburg has stopped its sporting crash.
After eleven Bundesliga and Champions League games without a win, the Lower Saxony won 4-1 (1-1) against bottom SpVgg Greuther Fürth and initially also saved the job of their coach Kohfeldt, with whom Kruse had already been successful at Werder Bremen worked together.
Unobtrusive debuts by Kruse and Wind
The returnee from Union Berlin and the Danish 12 million euro buyer Jonas Wind didn’t attract much attention, but the only 19-year-old Belgian Aster Vranckx scored twice in the 7th and 49th minute. Maximilian Arnold (70′) and Maximilian Philipp (76′) scored the reassuring third goal and the remarkable fourth goal. Branimir Hrgota made it 1-1 in Fürth with a penalty kick (44th), which was imposed after the video referee intervened.
“It feels very good, we deserve it,” commented the double scorer at internet provider DAZN. “We had a lot of chances and I’m very happy.” But Vranckx also demanded: “We have to continue like this now.”
A “final for all”
Wolfsburg’s head of sport, Jörg Schmadtke, had proclaimed this game a “final for everyone”. But the great hope of those responsible was always that this game will be the turning point of a season that has been completely screwed up so far and will give the club the opportunity to continue working with the highly valued Kohfeldt. Instead of thinking about the coach, Schmadtke and his sports director Marcel Schäfer have massively rebuilt the squad in the past few days. The established Wout Weghorst, Josuha Guilavogui, Daniel Ginczek and Admir Mehmedi let them go. Strikers Kruse, Wind and the American Kevin Paredes were added for more than 20 million euros. As a subsidiary of the VW Group, VfL can afford such a rescue package even during the corona crisis.
The plan to bring a “new spirit” into the cabin also worked. Because this time Wolfsburg, who had been so harmless in the end, used their first chance to score in the only Bundesliga game of the weekend in front of only 500 spectators and were not completely unsettled by the equalizer shortly before the break. The young Vranckx scored the first two Bundesliga goals of his career and the first two Wolfsburg goals this year.
Together with Kruse and Wind, the trained midfielder formed VfL’s three-man attack and stole the show from his teammates, who had only been signed a few days ago. Kruse, brought back by Union Berlin, almost gave Vranckx another goal in the 28th minute. The 33-year-old missed a big chance shortly after the break (48′).
But such opportunities and the recognizable commitment of Wolfsburg did not change the fact that this much-needed success was temporarily hanging by a thread. After both leading goals, VfL withdrew too far. And unlike in the first half of the season, the Fürthers are now a competitive and footballing respectable opponent against whom something like this can take revenge. A header from Sebastian Griesbeck (62nd) almost made it 2-2. In the end, Wolfsburg had the luck they had so often lacked in the past three months.