First Team

Weary legs

The Wolves finished third behind Osnabrück and Hannover in the Volkswagen Cup.

Der VfL Wolfsburg-Spieler Yannick Gerhardt läuft mit dem Ball.

VfL Wolfsburg missed the chance to make a winning start to pre-season after registering a defeat and a draw in friendlies against VfL Osnabrück and Hannover 96 respectively, which meant they finished the 2022 Volkswagen Cup in third place. In a mini-tournament featuring three 45-minute matches, Niko Kovac’s team kicked off the competition against hosts Osnabrück in front of 5,712 fans at the Bremer Brücke but slipped to a 3-1 defeat, with Luca Waldschmidt finding the net in the 36th minute. Sebastiaan Bornauw’s 25th-minute equaliser against Hannover earned VfL a 1-1 draw against Die Roten, whose 1-1 stalemate against Osnabrück meant the hosts clinched first place.

Niko Kovac: “It was obviously hot and we’re in the second week of preparation, but I expected more nevertheless. If you look at it as a whole game, we lost 4-2 – which obviously doesn’t match our expectations. We’ve been working on attacking areas but I could only see signs of that in certain periods today. We haven’t worked on our defence at all yet – I saw a lot to work on there. We definitely have to improve in that regard, certain processes aren’t working the way I’m imagining yet. We still have a lot to do.”

VfL Osnabrück: Kühn – Traore, Gyamfi, Trapp, Haas – Tesche, Wähling, Wiethaup, Putaro – Zahmel, Higl 

VfL Wolfsburg: Klinger – Heller, Guilavogui, van de Ven, Roussillon – Arnold, Franjic, Waldschmidt, Berkemer – Kruse, Meier

Goals: 1-0 Higl (9‘), 2-0 Tesche (25‘), 3-0 Higl (32‘), 3-1 Waldschmidt (36‘) 

Yellow cards: Higl / –

 

VfL Wolfsburg: Pervan – Lange (40’ Amoako), Bornauw, MacNulty, Sanchez – Gerhardt, Vranckx, Paredes, Philipp – Ambros, Busch

Hannover 96: Zieler – Dehm, Neumann, Börner, Köhn – Ondoua, Schaub, Besuschkow, Kerk – Weydandt, Teuchert

Goals: 0-1 Weydandt (4‘), 1-1 Bornauw (25‘)

Yellow cards: MacNulty / Schaub

The pre-season schedule