Wolfsburg's Silent Slide

Three managers, three different philosophies, all combining to the same outcome - relegation to the second tier.

As Felix Zwayer whistled for full-time after 120 minutes in Paderborn yesterday, it was the home fans that rejoiced. For only the third time in the history of the Bundesliga promotion playoff, the 2. Bundesliga side came out on top. VfL Wolfsburg, who survived back-to-back playoffs in 2017 and 2018, had run out of luck on this occasion.

The 2008-09 Bundesliga champions have finally come undone after a 29-year stint in the top flight. Many fans of other clubs will happily tell you that this is fantastic for the league by removing one of the perceived ‘corporate’ clubs. But Wolfsburg’s Bundesliga status was not sustained without merit, and their fans will be devastated as they reflect on this shocker of a season.

Three permanent managers took charge, all with differing ideas and characteristics. Wolfsburg showed that you can ring the changes all you like, but if the players aren’t up to it, there’s not much that can be done to prevent the inevitable. The club that was contesting Champions League knockouts with Real Madrid ten years ago has quietly vanished from the Bundesliga.

Credit: Ina Fassbender/AFP

Paul Simonis

Paul Simonis joined Wolfsburg following a successful stint as Go Ahead Eagles manager during 2024-25, and evidently believed that he could translate his attacking ideas comfortably. Having won the club its first KNVB-Beker and therefore achieving Europa League qualification, Simonis arrived with the promise of expansive, high intensity football, vastly different from what Ralph Hasenhüttl was delivering towards the end of the previous season.

Simonis had a clear transfer policy: energetic youngsters with plenty of potential, backed up by a few experienced signings. Centre-half Jonas Adjetey, 22, joined from FC Basel, while striker Kento Shiogai, and left-back Aaron Zehnter, both 20, entered the door at the Volkswagen Arena. Saël Kumbedi’s loan from Lyon was made permanent. Other youngsters were brought in on loan, such as 19-year-old wide forward Adam Daghim from Red Bull Salzburg, 22-year-old Jenson Seelt from Sunderland, and 20-year-old Jeanuël Belocian from Bayer Leverkusen.

Others returned from loan, such as defender Moritz Jenz from 1. FSV Mainz, and 20-year-old Dženan Pejčinović, who would need to replace the goals of departing strikers Tiago Tomás and Lukas Nmecha. Also coming in were 26-year-old tough-tackling holding midfielder Vinícius Souza from Sheffield United for €15m and 33-year-old former Tottenham and Manchester United star Christian Eriksen to control the tempo in midfield, who arrived for free. 29-year-old Slovakian defender Denis Vavro and 25-year-old Algerian forward Mohamed Amoura joined permanently, having been at the club on loan in 2024-25.

All this is to say that the squad had changed a lot over the summer. Simonis’ first league game was a success, beating 1. FC Heidenheim 3:1 away from home, with only five of the same starting XI that ended the previous season. Sounds like a good result, but as it turned out, Heidenheim was one of the only two teams worse than Wolfsburg this season. After two draws in the next two games, the Simonis era took a nosedive of harrowing proportions.

Simonis went on to lose six of the next seven league games, claiming a solitary win at the Volksparkstadion where Hamburger SV battered Die Wölfe with 27 shots, missing a penalty, and acquiring an xG of 2.77 to Wolfsburg’s 0.37. Somehow Wolfsburg ran out 1:0 winners thanks to a lovely effort from Daghim. Simonis ended his tenure with two wins, two draws and six defeats in just ten Bundesliga games, but with a positive goal difference overall due to a 9:0 drubbing of fifth-tier SV Hemelingen in the first round of the DFB-Pokal. This mattered little when Wolfsburg went out in the second round to 2. Bundesliga side Holstein Kiel with Seelt being red carded.

The players never recovered mentally once the losing streak started. The club’s top earner, Croatian midfielder Lovro Majer, constantly looked passive, waiting for the ball to come to him, and was dropped after Matchday 4. Meanwhile, the usually reliable striker Jonas Wind faced injury setbacks and fitness issues, unhelpful for a side desperately needing goals. Simonis chopped and changed his side every week, but it didn’t seem to matter. The players would concede early and drop their heads, never giving it a proper go to fight their way back into the game. By losing 2:1 at Werder Bremen, as two late strikes turned the game on its head, Simonis was done.

Daniel Bauer

Daniel Bauer was appointed as interim head coach in November following Simonis’ dismissal. Having been caretaker coach for the final two games of the previous season, Bauer was perhaps expecting to be in the dugout for a few games until the club found a permanent replacement. Keeping the 4-2-3-1 that Simonis used but changing the profile of his personnel, Bauer was able to pick up some early results. After two wins and a draw in his first four games, things were looking up for Wolfsburg, and Bauer was given the job on a permanent basis. Sporting Director Pirmin Schwegler told ESPN that they wanted to ensure stability and success for “this season and beyond”.

Majer was back in the starting line-up and scored in the win at home to Union Berlin. Patrick Wimmer was deployed as the runner in behind, coming in from the left hand-side. Eriksen was being utilised as a right-winger, getting on the ball in the half-spaces to deliver crosses. He would finish the season in the 97^th percentile for completed crosses and the 94^th percentile for big chances created. The use of Kumbedi pushing up slightly more as a right-back kept full-backs guessing what Eriksen was about to do.

Having climbed the ladder again, Bauer’s team hopped back on the slide. A 4:3 defeat at home to SC Freiburg, despite Pejčinović’s second hattrick of the season, left the club in 14^th place heading into the winter break. Perhaps the players enjoyed too much of the festivities, because they returned with an 8:1 defeat at Bayern Munich, with Jenz and Kilian Fischer scoring own goals. The 2:1 win at home to FC St. Pauli in the next fixture on January 14^th was Bauer’s last. Despite looking for his team to dominate possession, which they often did in his early games, they were too vulnerable to counter-attacks. Wolfsburg were undone twice on the break in a 4:0 defeat at VfB Stuttgart, Bauer’s penultimate game. After letting HSV come back from behind to win 2:1 the next week, Bauer was gone, with just two points from his final eight games in charge.

The players heads had seemingly dropped again and even seemed disinterested as they drifted into a relegation battle. By Bauer’s last few games, Wolfsburg were being totally overrun, and he even set up with a back three against HSV as a last-ditch attempt at claiming a win.

Dieter Hecking

What do you do when your club’s players have abandoned two coaches in the same season? Bring in your successsful former head coach that’s also a known hardman.

Dieter Hecking was at the helm from December 2012 until October 2016. In that time, he took the club to a second-place finish in the league and the quarter-finals of the Champions League, being cruelly denied a semi-final spot by a Cristiano Ronaldo hattrick at the Bernabéu to overturn a two-goal aggregate lead. Fans remained fond of Hecking, and surely he would be the right type of character to bring defensive solidity and a bit of fire to the team.

Well, Hecking’s second spell with Wolfsburg started as Simonis and Bauer’s had ended – with a lot of losing. After a decent point away to TSG Hoffenheim, losses followed at home to Werder and Eintracht Frankfurt, with a 6:3 mauling away to Bayer Leverkusen in between. Die Wolfe found themselves in 17^th place with five games to go, four points from the relative safety of the playoff place but seven points behind full safety.

By switching to a 3-4-3 and eventually a 3-5-2, allowing forwards like Wimmer, Amoura and Daghim to fully utilise their pace, and bringing Eriksen back into the middle, Wolfsburg became much harder for teams to hold possession against and break the defence down. A win away to Union and two draws from the next four games allowed Wolfsburg some breathing space as they climbed to 16^th. Their big problem was that they were only ahead of St. Pauli and Heidenheim on goal difference, and they had to travel to the cauldron of the Millerntor-Stadion.

For the first time all year, the players stood up and let themselves be counted. They dominated St. Pauli for 90 minutes, with Eriksen the decisive factor. After troubling St. Pauli with his set-piece deliveries early on, Eriksen got an assist late in the first-half as Konstantinos Koulierakis headed in from a corner. He then delivered another dangerous corner in the second-half which the St. Pauli goalkeeper Nikola Vasilj punched into his own net. Having then missed a penalty, Eriksen helped deliver a third goal, shooting at Vasilj who parried it to Pejčinović for an easy rebound to make it 3:1.

Hecking’s slightly more structured tactical setup allowed them the reprieve of the promotion/relegation playoff. He kept things simple, getting his best on-the-ball player in his best position to put in crosses or set-piece deliveries for a 6ft2 striker. Not asking your centre-backs who are good in the air but lack mobility to try and play expansively. Allowing your wing-backs who can run for days to get further forward than they had been allowed while playing as full-backs in a four-man backline.

But while the fans may not have taken the playoff for granted, the players really seemed to. Despite controlling proceedings in the first-leg at home, Wolfsburg could not break the stubborn SC Paderborn down. Paderborn countered their opponents with a 3-4-3 of their own and got the result they needed, a goalless draw to take the tie to a winner-takes-all match at the Home Deluxe Arena.

Pejčinović gave the travelling fans their dream start, tucking away a cutback in the third minute. Players can change the game individually, however, and Danish international Joakim Mæhle certainly did that by acquiring two yellow cards, the second being an utterly daft challenge on Mattes Hansen, and getting sent off in just the 14^th minute. Wolfsburg were up against it for the rest of the game. Paderborn’s star man Filip Bilbija equalised from a simple long-throw routine before half-time. Having peppered the Wolfsburg goal all game, the breakthrough finally came in the 100^th minute, with captain Laurin Curda volleying in a wonderful cross to send Paderborn back to the big time. Hecking could only watch on as his ten men continued to chase shadows, surely exhausted from the extra running they had to do after Mæhle’s reckless decision.

New Boss?

Having only been given a contract to the end of the season, Hecking will surely be off again, after failing to ensure the club’s survival in the top flight by some very fine margins. For all the decisions that the three managers made throughout the season, it was the players as a collective and as individuals that brought the club its first ever relegation from the Bundesliga. The mentality was missing for the bulk of the season, with the fans struggling to find cause for celebration at any moment. Another summer overhaul is needed, although the value of many players will have diminished significantly as a result of the performances they mustered.

While fans of other clubs will be relieved that ‘FC Volkswagen’ are out of sight for at least a year, some real soul-searching will go on in Lower Saxony. Schwegler, alongside Managing Director Peter Christiansen, have their work cut out. The club’s statement today, posted to its website, said that they had “fallen short in almost every respect”. I’m sat here wondering what respects the club management think they haven’t fallen short in.