Sports director Jörg Schmadtke from the troubled Bundesliga club VfL Wolfsburg has defended the large-scale personnel exchange in attack.
“In our opinion, that was necessary in this situation,” said the 57-year-old to “Sportbuzzer”: “We believe that another spirit is good for us.”
In the last few days of the winter transfer window, VfL brought Max Kruse back and signed Danish attacker Jonas Wind and US talent Kevin Paredes for a total of almost 24 million euros.
On the other hand, VfL gave up their long-standing goalscorer Wout Weghorst (FC Burnley) as well as attacking reserves Daniel Ginczek (Fortuna Düsseldorf) and Admir Mehmedi (Antalyaspor).
VfL Wolfsburg: Schmadtke justifies transfers
That was “perhaps unusual in terms of concentration,” explained Schmadtke: “It would be wrong if I were to claim that something like this is normal and quite commonplace”.
However, when we finished fourth in the Bundesliga last year, “we came to the conclusion that we wanted to make changes.” Also because the players who had been given up “in turn approached the club with the desire for change”.
With only 17 goals this season, VfL, together with Greuther Fürth, is the team with the fewest goals in the league and has not scored four times in a row.
On Sunday (5:30 p.m. / DAZN), VfL, which is just before the relegation zone, welcomes the tail light from Franconia. Schmadtke recently spoke of a “game with an endgame character”, not only for coach Florian Kohfeldt, “but for everyone involved”.