For the first time since the Corona pandemic began, VfL Wolfsburg will be allowed to fill the Volkswagen Arena to capacity on Saturday against SC Freiburg – but the club is only expecting a crowd of just under 11,000.
30,000 spectators should be in attendance on Saturday when VfL Wolfsburg host SC Freiburg, who are still unbeaten, but the Volkswagen Arena is expected to be only one-third full – between 10,500 and 11,000 spectators are expected. That’s why coach Mark van Bommel is launching an appeal to the VfL fans in advance: “I ask that everyone comes,” says the Dutchman, who is counting on the interaction between the fans and the team. “You have to do it together,” stresses van Bommel: “The coaching team, the team, the club, and that includes the fans.” Who could give support to the increasingly insecure team. The coach is counting on a reciprocal effect: “We have to show that we are working and trying to play good football. The fans have to whip us forward again. “
Old strengths are disappearing more and more
It is urgently necessary in view of the sporting misery. VfL have been waiting for a win for seven games now, and after three league defeats in a row, they also suffered their first defeat in the Champions League on Wednesday in Salzburg (1:3). Almost worse than the defeats is the way Van Bommel’s team performs. Even though the coach himself says he recognised some good phases during the past 90 minutes, the deficits clearly predominate at the moment – both defensively and offensively. Everything that distinguished VfL last season under former coach Oliver Glasner is gradually evaporating.
It would be desirable for the club if, as the 44-year-old believes, this were indeed part of the process that van Bommel has been driving since the summer. On Friday, he again emphasised what he has said so often: He wants to retain the good things that distinguished VfL under Glasner and add his own ideas. The only thing is that the intensity and running power of the Wolfsburg team have fallen victim to van Bommel’s possession plan, and at the same time gallantry and greed have left the suddenly strangely full-looking squad. And there is hardly any sign of successful pressing moments and switching actions, two characteristics of the previous season.
“They don’t sit in the dressing room with their heads between their knees. “
MARK VAN BOMMEL
“We’ll get out of this,” says van Bommel with conviction. He points to his team’s good training sessions, to self-critical players who are not completely morally down. Or as the Dutchman puts it: “They don’t sit in the dressing room with their heads between their knees.”
However, there is not much left of the “one-for-all and all-for-one mentality” that made this team, which will have to do without Luca Waldschmidt (muscular problems) against Freiburg, unpleasant for every opponent just a few months ago. Almost every player is showing a dramatic loss of form. All gone? No, says van Bommel. “It’s not gone, only it has to come back.” Wherever it is, what had made VfL the top team in the league.
