Jörg Schmadtke defends transfer offensive in attack

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 sports buzzer: “We believe that another spirit is good for us.”

In the last few days of the winter transfer window, VfL had brought back ex-national player Max Kruse (33) and signed Danish attacker Jonas Wind (22) and US talent Kevin Paredes (18) for a total of almost 24 million euros.

On the other hand, VfL gave up their long-standing goalscorer Wout Weghorst (29, FC Burnley) and attacking reserves Daniel Ginczek (30, Fortuna Düsseldorf) and Admir Mehmedi (30, Antalyaspor).

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 just 17 goals this season, VfL, together with Greuther Fürth, is the team with the fewest goals in the league, having failed to score four times in a row. On Sunday (5.30 p.m.), VfL, who are just before the relegation zone, welcomes the bottom team from Franconia. Schmadtke recently spoke of a “game with an endgame character”, not only for coach Florian Kohfeldt, “but for everyone involved”.