Champions League
“Hurts brutally”: Wolfsburg women are shocked
The Wolves around Alexandra Popp (2nd from right) missed the group stage of the Champions League. photo
© Hendrik Schmidt/dpa/archive image
The VfL Wolfsburg footballers have to completely rearrange themselves for the rest of the season. The failed premier class finalist will be challenged in the top league game on Sunday.
Alexandra stood eleven weeks after the World Cup debacle in Australia Popp was similarly perplexed and close to tears in front of the camera and could hardly find any words for VfL Wolfsburg’s exit from the Champions League.
“That hurts brutally,” said the visibly shocked DFB captain after the 2-0 defeat against Paris FC. This is another bitter setback for German women’s football. The new interim national coach Horst Hrubesch saw in the AOK Stadium that even a decorated club like Wolfsburg now has problems at international level.
“We were in the final last season – and suddenly you’re not in the group stage,” said Popp. The group draw this Friday is likely to hurt the VfL players and those responsible around coach Tommy Stroot and manager Ralf Kellermann again, as will the opening games on November 14th and 15th. From a German perspective, only the seeded champions FC Bayern Munich and Eintracht Frankfurt are represented.
Missed out on lucrative income
By being eliminated in front of 3,747 spectators in the AOK Stadium, Wolfsburg not only missed out on the entry fee of 400,000 euros. Other bonuses will also be missing from the coffers: the club pocketed around 1.1 million euros in the last European Cup season. There was 50,000 euros per win, plus further extra money for reaching the quarter and semi-finals and 200,000 euros for losing the final (2:3 against FC Barcelona).
The VfL footballers triumphed in the premier class in 2013 and 2014, and since then they have always been among the eight best teams in Europe. “There is a huge disappointment,” said sports director Kellermann to the “Wolfsburger Allgemeine”. His club now has to reorganize itself given the lack of Champions League match days: “We will have a completely different program. Fewer travel days, fewer games.”
No triple burden
At least the Bundesliga leaders are now going into the rest of the season without a triple burden, while their long-term rivals FC Bayern have to cope with it. On Sunday (2 p.m./MagentaSport and DAZN), the German runner-up from Lower Saxony will be challenged in the Bundesliga top game against pursuers TSG 1899 Hoffenheim.
“You come to Wolfsburg to win big titles and play big games, also to play big competitions. The fact that you couldn’t do that this year just hurts incredibly,” complained the Dutch national player Dominique Janssen, who also played against Paris missed a penalty. Stroot summed up with a blank look: “A big defeat for all of us that we now have to digest.”
For Popp and her DFB colleagues such as Lena Oberdorf, Kathrin Hendrich, Lena Lattwein and Marina Hegering, the end serves as a blueprint for their similarly difficult situation in the DFB selection, which is worried about qualifying for the Olympics. “Maybe it’s just not enough right now. We just have to work on being more consistent,” said Germany’s “Footballer of the Year” about her VfL.