This is what you call a classic own goal. And VfL Wolfsburg is not the first club (or association) to have something like this happen. Nicolas Cozza, who has hardly played a sporting role at VfL Wolfsburg so far, was voted player of the first half of the season on the club’s website
This process is nothing new; the DFB has only just discovered that polls among its own and other fans often do not produce the expected results. Emre Can was recently voted Germany’s “National Player of the Year”, with an overwhelming majority ahead of Niclas Füllkrug, one of the few sporting winners of the past calendar year.
However, 64.4 percent of the votes went to Can – users had called on social media to make the Dortmund player, who only played 412 out of a possible 990 international minutes, the winner. And the masses followed this plan. Can reacted relaxed to the unexpected award and wrote: “When fun becomes serious… I’m still happy and hey, against Belgium and France was pretty good too.”
Substitute Cozza wins with 48 percent ahead of top striker Wind
VfL Wolfsburg now also have their Can case. The Bundesliga club asked on its homepage for the player of the first half of the season and put the entire squad up for selection. The logical answer would have been striker Jonas Wind, who was involved in 13 of VfL’s 21 goals with nine goals and four assists. However, there was a call on social media for Frenchman Nicolas Cozza, a substitute and last season’s disappointing winter signing, to be promoted to the top of the poll. And once again, the masses followed suit, and not just from the Wolfsburg fan camp.
Cozza – six appearances in the first half of the season,Apparently VfL tried to do something about it themselves on Thursday night, as striker Wind was suddenly in charge as if by magic. By 10 o’clock in the morning, however, when voting ended, left-back Cozza was back in the lead. With 48 percent, the Wolfsburg substitute won ahead of the Danish top man, who received 45 percent of the votes. Online fun at Cozza’s expense – not everyone is as relaxed about voting as Emre Can
This is not the first time something like this has happened to VfL
This is not the first time something like this has happened at VfL – for a while, current Düsseldorf player Felix Klaus was voted “Player of the Match” – and those responsible at VfL are not particularly amused by the outcome of the online vote on their own website. They did not want to comment on this on Thursday.