Against ex-club initially away

Anyone familiar with the careers of Niko Kovac and Max Kruse shouldn’t be surprised that many around VfL Wolfsburg have been asking this summer: The new coach and his idiosyncratic star – can it be right? The first answer to this is a resounding « yes » with a small « but ». Because during the first day of the Bundesliga against his former club Werder Bremen (Saturday, 3:30 p.m.), Kruse will initially only be seated on the bench. « Max had a calf injury first and then got sick. He definitely has some catching up to do. So it won’t be a start from the start, » Kovac confirmed on Thursday.

Otherwise, there is an impressive list of at least ten players at Wolfsburg who have already left or are expected to leave a far too big squad after Kovac’s start in June. But Kruse doesn’t like it.

According to an article by the ‘Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung’, the manager and his number 9 met outside the club’s premises early for a swap deal. « Max is a great boy, I only have positive things to say, » Kovac said later during the training camp in Tyrol. He is a player who « despite his 34 years can still score 15 goals a season and play five to ten more. Always! He has the quality that few Bundesliga players have. When he is fit and physically able to do everything he can, he has skills like Thomas Müller. »

Max Kruse has plenty of competition in attack at VfL Wolfsburg

Kruse’s real challenge in Wolfsburg is therefore not Kovac, but the one he doesn’t know from Bremen: Because he has strong competition in VfL – in terms of quality and quantity. Lukas Nmecha, Jonas Wind, Bartosz Bialek, Omar Marmoush, Luca Waldschmidt, Maximilian Philipp, Jakub Kaminski and Patrick Wimmer: Besides Kruse, at least eight other professionals are available for four attacking spots. Five of them are senior internationals, six of whom are at least ten years younger than the former Werder captain.

For comparison: in Bremen and also at Union Berlin, Kruse was a so-called difference player for a long time, whose loss to Werder could never be replaced in 2019 and whose commitment raised the 1 FC Union 2020 on a different sporting level. Even at Wolfsburg, he was a key transfer in January, changing the mood in the dressing room and saving a battered side from relegation.

This situation has changed. His close confidant Florian Kohfeldt is no longer there. And from a purely sporting point of view, Kruse is no longer a savior, but currently only a challenger. Nevertheless, all fears about the relationship between Kovac and Kruse are meant to quell the fact that the 14-time national player has always got on particularly well with strong coaching personalities: Christian Streich in Freiburg, for example, or Lucien Favre at Borussia Monchengladbach. « Max is Max, » Streich said of him in March. With Kruse, you can « laugh once in a while. » From time to time we see exceptional passes and beautiful goals. What more do we want?

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