Two days after the official termination of the contract, Sport Managing Director Jörg Schmadtke publicly justified the separation of the Bundesliga soccer club VfL Wolfsburg from coach Florian Kohfeldt shortly after the end of the previous season.
“The overall situation was clearly burdened for everyone involved. It was therefore not advisable to start a new season like this,” said the 58-year-old in the “Sky” interview.
The Lower Saxony had already failed in the group stage under Kohfeldt and his predecessor Mark van Bommel in the Champions League and did not get beyond a disappointing twelfth place in the Bundesliga.
The former Bundesliga goalkeeper expects Kohfeldt’s successor Niko Kovac to “give us back continuity and a thirst for success”. But Schmadtke also made it clear: “Niko is positive in public. In the end, however, we all know very well that it will be about results, nothing else.”
Schmadtke will definitely leave Lower Saxony on February 1st next year and withdraw from the football business. A formal handover to his designated successor, VfL sporting director Marcel Schäfer, is not planned: “It will be a smooth process.”
The wolves will play their first competitive game in the first round of the DFB Cup on July 30 (6:00 p.m. / Sky) at regional league club Carl Zeiss Jena. The opening opponent in the Bundesliga is on August 6 (3:30 p.m. / Sky) in the northern duel in the Volkswagen Arena, promoted Werder Bremen.