Heart Over Head?

With the return of Deniz Undav, VfB has set ano­ther trans­fer record just a few weeks after sig­ning Erme­din Demi­ro­vić, ful­fil­ling what see­med to be the big­gest wish of their fans this sum­mer break. So, is cau­ti­on being thrown to the wind once again in Bad Cannstatt? Or have times sim­ply chan­ged?

It’s hard for me to remem­ber the last time a con­tract sig­ning on Mer­ce­des­stra­ße was met with such eupho­ria as the re-sig­ning of Deniz Undav, who felt like he was just on an exten­ded Euro­pean Cham­pi­on­ship vaca­ti­on. When Erme­din Demi­ro­vić was signed, I drew com­pa­ri­sons to Jon Dahl Tom­asson, who moved from AC Milan to Bad Cannstatt in 2005 but never quite lived up to his time in the red and black jer­sey. Per­haps the cur­rent exci­te­ment sur­roun­ding the 18-goal stri­ker from last sea­son can be most clo­se­ly com­pared to the return of Alex Hleb, who VfB loan­ed out from FC Bar­ce­lo­na for the 2009–2010 Cham­pi­ons League sea­son, but even that com­pa­ri­son doesn’t ful­ly fit.

Put­ting asi­de the fact that the 2000s are now near­ly 20 years ago, foot­ball has gene­ral­ly chan­ged mas­si­ve­ly, and so has VfB in recent years. Due to the finan­cial holes cau­sed by the pan­de­mic, a sta­di­um reno­va­ti­on, and two rele­ga­ti­ons, the club had to let go of seve­ral key play­ers over the last four years, making at least 30 mil­li­on euros every sum­mer: Gre­gor Kobel, Nico Gon­zá­lez, Orel Manga­la, Saša Kalaj­džić, Kon­stan­ti­nos Mavro­pa­nos, Bor­na Sosa, Wata­ru Endo, Hiro­ki Ito, Wal­de­mar Anton, Ser­hou Gui­ras­sy. Simi­lar amounts were only pre­vious­ly brought in when the club nee­ded to coun­ter­ba­lan­ce the cos­ts of rele­ga­ti­on.

Development and Goals

Unli­ke in 2021 and 2022, last season’s depar­tures did not lead to ano­ther rele­ga­ti­on batt­le but rather to a push for Euro­pean spots and the asso­cia­ted finan­cial wind­falls. So, can the VfB jus­ti­fy tying up at least 50 mil­li­on euros in two play­ers ins­tead of coun­tering the depar­tu­re of key play­ers by sole­ly deve­lo­ping new talent, as they did in the past? The “Ver­ti­kal­pass” blog comm­ents on this as fol­lows:

VfB is some­what depar­ting from its path of focu­sing on play­er deve­lo­p­ment with the­se recent trans­fers. The enorm­ous value app­re­cia­ti­on of some play­ers in the last three years has kept VfB from a finan­cial down­fall. It’s not neces­s­a­ri­ly likely that Demi­ro­vić and Undav will achie­ve simi­lar value increa­ses, given the trans­fer sums invol­ved. But it’s not impos­si­ble, as seen with Nic­las Füll­krug. Moreo­ver, with Mil­lot, Stil­ler, Ster­giou, Rie­der, Rou­ault, and not least Diehl still in the squad, the­re are play­ers who could gene­ra­te trans­fer sur­plu­s­es in the future.

So, it’s a clear “yes and no.” I feel simi­lar­ly: On the one hand, the trans­fer fees for Demi­ro­vić and Undav are obs­ce­n­ely high by VfB’s stan­dards. Tog­e­ther, they cost about as much as Gon­zá­lez, Kabak, Gui­ras­sy, Kuz­ma­no­vic, and Silas com­bi­ned. On the other hand, Fabi­an Wohl­ge­muth alre­a­dy star­ted in the spring by sig­ning three per­spec­ti­ve players—Nick Wol­te­ma­de, Yan­nik Kei­tel, and Jus­tin Diehl—on free trans­fers, fol­lo­wed by the loans of Fabi­an Rie­der, Frans Krät­zig, the inex­pen­si­ve trans­fer of Ramon Hen­driks, and final­ly, the sig­ning of an estab­lished Bun­des­li­ga play­er like Jeff Cha­b­ot, along with the per­ma­nent sig­nings of Jamie Lewe­ling, Antho­ny Rou­ault, and Leo­ni­das Ster­giou after their loan spells. Until Demirović’s sig­ning, VfB had thus taken on a mana­geable finan­cial risk.

Where Is the Money Coming From?

The size of the risk with Undav and Demi­ro­vić can only be asses­sed by con­side­ring that for 50 mil­li­on euros, seve­ral play­ers could pro­ba­b­ly have been signed who might have per­for­med equal­ly well—or the money could have been saved for bad times. Dan­ny Galm wro­te two remar­kab­le sen­ten­ces in his artic­le on the Undav sig­ning on ZVW.de:

After all, the con­trol­ling bodies at Wasen would not have bles­sed the mil­li­on-dol­lar trans­fer offen­si­ve if the free-spen­ding weren’t solid­ly thought out and backed up. At least that’s the hope of the fans, who have too often seen in the past that the old say­ing, “the big­gest mista­kes are made in times of suc­cess,” has been impres­si­ve­ly pro­ven time and again in the red club­house on Mer­ce­des­stra­ße.

I would inde­ed trust the cur­rent super­vi­so­ry board less at this point. Becau­se it’s alar­ming that, accor­ding to Ben­ni Hofmann’s rese­arch, VfB would have fal­len into a threa­tening finan­cial situa­ti­on last year, despi­te avo­i­ding rele­ga­ti­on, wit­hout the Por­sche deal. Now, on the other hand, thanks to the run­ner-up finish and the com­ple­ted sta­di­um, they seem to be free of finan­cial worries, or as Alex­an­der Wehr­le sta­ted at the gene­ral mee­ting, the eco­no­mic con­so­li­da­ti­on pha­se will be com­ple­ted after the upco­ming sea­son.

This makes it ulti­m­ate­ly dif­fi­cult to assess this year’s trans­fer sum­mer finan­ci­al­ly: How much money was set asi­de for trans­fers wit­hout tou­ch­ing the emer­gen­cy funds? What is the sala­ry struc­tu­re in the squad, and will sala­ries real­ly decrease if VfB is no lon­ger play­ing in Euro­pe in the 2025–2026 sea­son? It may seem pet­ty to focus on such mat­ters in the cur­rent pha­se, but we’ve all seen how VfB was­ted money on squads that kept get­ting worse for ten years.

New Goals?

From a sport­ing and thus emo­tio­nal per­spec­ti­ve, the chair­man and his sport­ing direc­tor have hit the bull’s eye. Our new striking duo is in its prime foot­bal­ling years and has alre­a­dy pro­ven its scoring pro­wess last sea­son. If money can still be found some­whe­re for a right-foo­ted cen­tral defen­der, the much-tal­ked-about sell-off could be aver­ted, and important play­ers like Mil­lot, Füh­rich, Mit­tel­städt, Undav, or Nübel, as well as the coach, would be retai­ned. If we put asi­de, for a moment, the “one-sea­son-won­der” syn­dro­me that tra­di­tio­nal­ly aff­licts VfB after suc­cessful sea­sons, the­re is curr­ent­ly litt­le reason for pes­si­mism. Espe­ci­al­ly sin­ce, with Undav, the club has not only retai­ned a relia­ble goal scorer but also an inte­gra­ti­ve figu­re on and off the pitch, some­thing we haven’t had in a long time—as was evi­dent when he came on the pitch against Bil­bao.

Nevert­hel­ess, with such invest­ments, expec­ta­ti­ons also rise. Spen­ding 50 mil­li­on euros—to aim for 40 points first—seems inap­pro­pria­te and can­not be the goal of the new striking duo. The same appli­es to the Cham­pi­ons League. Even if the cam­paign ends at the latest in the round of 16, this squad should ide­al­ly con­tri­bu­te to its own refi­nan­cing through match bonu­ses in the Cham­pi­ons League. And even if sala­ries may be stag­ge­red, for the­se invest­ments to tru­ly be wort­hwhile, VfB must also be repre­sen­ted in Euro­pe again in the sea­son after next. And that—let me repeat—is only one year after nar­row­ly avo­i­ding a dis­as­trous sport­ing and finan­cial rele­ga­ti­on.

But why, damn it, shouldn’t VfB be able to wri­te ano­ther suc­cess sto­ry despi­te all the jus­ti­fied pes­si­mism we’ve con­di­tio­ned our­sel­ves to? I main­tain that the club must sei­ze this cur­rent pha­se as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to return to cal­mer waters and re-estab­lish and con­so­li­da­te its­elf both sport­ingly and finan­ci­al­ly. But per­haps we can also have a litt­le fun along the way.

Pic­tu­re: © Lars Baron/Getty Images

Schreibe einen Kommentar