Last weekend, Nick Woltemade risked diplomatic complications with his family, but this time there was no danger. A week ago, in Stuttgart’s 2-2 draw in Bremen, Woltemade appeared in front of the Bremen goal in added time, which at that moment gave him a deeply divided relationship. His mother supports Werder Bremen, his father and his grandfather have VfB in their hearts, and in this lose-lose situation, Woltemade, who was born in Bremen and works for VfB, has actually found a peace-keeping solution. He was denied by Werder’s goalkeeper Zetterer, which made his mother happy – and his father and grandfather at least not unhappy, because the VfB community had long since settled for a draw after making up two deficits.
A week later, in VfB’s 3-2 (0-1) win against Union Berlin, Nick Woltemade no longer had to take intra-family tensions into account; nothing is known of any connections to Berlin. Thanks to his two goals (51st, 59th), VfB once again made up a deficit, which, in addition to congratulations from his family, earned him the trophy of the most valuable player of the game. In fact, Woltemade did much more well that evening: the arrival from Bremen not only turned the game around for his VfB, but also the mood in the entire club. Because until Woltemade came on, VfB was exactly on the path it didn’t want to be on; For a half, the team was busy raising the very issue that they had so bravely tried to ignore.
We! Are not! Tired! With this mantra, coach Sebastian Hoeneß sent his decimated team into their fourth game in ten days, but the first half turned into a sobering counter-statement. If VfB’s possession of the ball is otherwise used to control the game and prepare for scoring chances the next moment, it served no one on this evening. The players passed the ball to each other because that’s what they were used to, but the passes had no destination, no message and no temperature whatsoever. It was sleepwalking with the ball, even the newly infallible Angelo Stiller made three and a half bad passes.
It was one of those games where you can smell and taste what is about to happen: namely a very banal goal that started with a Union throw-in and ended with VfB goalkeeper Alexander Nübel’s indecision, who was half awake State couldn’t decide between punching and catching. The league has seen a header goal by Union defender Danilo Doekhi (37th) several times, but he was rarely so free in a full penalty area.
Woltemade scores two goals that look easy and not easy at all
Coach Hoeneß said afterwards that the first half was “not to watch”, but he already knew the happy ending to the story. At half-time, the saving thought came to him: he sent Woltemade onto the field – which suddenly turned this non-football game into a football game, despite another banal goal conceded (Skov, 48th). “That’s how we need Nick,” said VfB captain Atakan Karazor later, praising “the brutal physique and brutal presence” of the 1.98 meter tall striker. A justified but also astonishing compliment because it contradicted the prejudice that is circulating about Woltemade: that although he has an impressive body, he is still a rather harmless striker. Or that he isn’t actually a striker at all, but rather an attacking midfielder, gifted with an amazingly fine foot that you would never trust such idiots to have. But without the virtues that one would necessarily expect from lulatches.
Maybe it will happen that the story of little, big Nick will soon be told as a Sebastian Hoeneß story, because this coach may again be able to profitably develop the talents of a talent. Hoeneß recently said that Woltemade wanted to “develop more towards the nines,” and against Union it was clear what the coach intended. Like a nine, Woltemade secured the balls and passed them on, and he also scored two easy-looking, not easy goals at all.
But because it was against Union, sports director Fabian Wohlgemuth can also see this evening as recognition. Although it has not yet been possible to replace the playing skills of the escaped defenders Waldemar Anton and Hiroki Ito, the Woltemade example shows that Wohlgemuth’s department has achieved something that Union Berlin failed to achieve last year: a surprising Champions League win. Not only to complement participants with gratuitously seductive names (Union: Gosens, Volland, Bonucci), but also to let the imagination run wild. The Stuttgart team spent a lot of money on Ermedin Demirovic and Deniz Undav, but they also secured talents like Woltemade or Justin Diehl, 20, in the Swabian way, for free.
Captain Karazor later said that they wanted to “take the second half with them” into the very important Champions League game against Young Boys Bern, in the safe assumption that this would not apply to him of all people. Karazor, one of the least dangerous players in the universe, scored the winning goal against Union, but in a way that cannot be replicated on Wednesday: Union goalkeeper Frederik Rönnow played the ball at his feet.
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