It is just over six months now since Wolfsburg felt the shudder of crisis. It was a corporate crisis, but with this peculiar football club in their particular city, it was the sort of problem that left almost nobody unconcerned.
Volkswagen, the automobile manufacturer, were found by industry regulators to have inserted software designed to mislead pollution-testing procedures into the engines of some of their models. The value of the company plunged by $35bn (Dh128.6bn) in less than a week. Volkswagen (VW) announced an emergency budget of over $15bn to cover the short-term damage. Wolfsburg was the epicentre of the crisis. Half of the 120,000 population is employed by VW.
Indirectly, Wolfsburg’s footballers are too, because the car giant supports the club, an arrangement that means the club are allowed to bypass the ownership laws that govern most of the clubs in the German top divisions. Without VW’s backing, Wolfsburg would not have the economic muscle to be competing for elite prizes, like the German Cup they won last season, or the Bundesliga title they seized in 2009.
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They look like the odd-men out in the last eight of the Uefa Champions League, the provincials in a field of metropolitan might: minnows next to teams from Madrid, Manchester, Munich, Paris, Lisbon and Barcelona. They have never progressed as far as a European Cup quarter-final before, and if they had some good fortune in having only to steer themselves past Gent of Belgium in the last round, they did topple a big name in the group phase, effectively eliminating Manchester United.
But that was back in 2015. They are not widely fancied to eliminate Real Madrid, who they host on Wednesday night. Wolfsburg have not had a good year so far. They have dropped from third place to eighth in the Bundesliga table since early December, and are coming off a 3-0 defeat at Bayer Leverkusen on Friday night.
Rather like VW, some of their luxury models have been running a little faulty. Nicklas Bendtner, the striker with a chequered reputation whom Wolfsburg bought from Arsenal, has been suspended by the club from first-team training after a series of disciplinary incidents.
“We now have to regard him as a threat to the club,” general manager Klaus Allofs told German television. Bendtner is not the only striker to have been in trouble. Max Kruse was dropped from Germany’s squad for last month’s friendly internationals after he became involved in an altercation at a Berlin nightspot. National coach Joachim Loew called Kruse “unprofessional.”
Bendtner seems likely to move on in the summer. Wolfsburg are hardly in a position to carry highly-salaried players as surplus. The budget benefits they gained with the €75m (Dh312.8m) sale of Kevin de Bruyne to Manchester City, and the €20m received from Inter Milan for Ivan Perisic last summer will probably not be used to recruit more footballers of the calibre of Julian Draxler, the young midfielder brought in 2015 to cover the considerable space left by De Bruyne. The VW crisis means purse strings will be tightened. “We all know the situation,” Allofs said.
Draxler has shone in some of the Champions League ties, though not provided the same dynamism De Bruyne provided to last season’s league campaign, when Wolfburg finished runners-up to Bayern Munich.
Allofs sees a sharp distinction between the way the whole team performs in Europe and domestically. “The difference is that we don’t play like a Champions League team when we’re playing in the Bundesliga.
“I’m not fearful we will play against Madrid like we did against Leverkusen,” the general manager said.
“This is an exceptional game for so many of the players. We need to put one or two things right, but they will go out there to enjoy it, and see if they can reach their best level.”
The city could do with something to lift spirits.
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