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Wolfsburg in the Champions League: Tangled up in improvisation – sport

They actually shelved the Mark van Bommel chapter at VfL Wolfsburg. The brief engagement of the Dutch coach is probably one of the biggest misunderstandings in the club’s still rather short history, and his footballing legacy is also considered to be manageable. In the Autostadt, however, he left behind a theory that is known as the “butterfly effect” and was once illustrated by the mathematician Edward N. Lorenz with the following question: Can the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil trigger a tornado in Texas?

Of course, van Bommel was also unable to give a conclusive answer as to whether small events amplify themselves through a chain reaction to a catastrophe. But the line of argument in his last weeks as VfL coach followed the same pattern: How would it have gone if we hadn’t caught that darn unjust penalty against Sevilla FC?

And he was somehow right: In the history of the Champions League, only a few penalties were whistled that met with more incomprehension than the one with which the Spaniards scored the 1-1 final in Wolfsburg in September. It is also a fact: The guests in the close group G, in which RB Salzburg and OSC Lille are also fighting for progress, received a competitive advantage through this whistle, which the new Wolfsburg coach Florian Kohfeldt still has to nibble on.

“Sevilla was good, we weren’t!”, Analyzes VfL striker Lukas Nmecha

Kohfeldt, who has been with VfL for about a month, did not want to argue in the subjunctive after the 2-0 defeat in the second leg. Tuesday evening’s analysis, he said, was “relatively simple” and built on two pillars. On the one hand, the “worst case” occurred, namely the early goal against Seville midfielder Joan Jordan (13th minute). Much more difficult, however, was the fact that Kohfeldt was “a bit troubled” and that VfL striker Lukas Nmecha later reduced to a simple formula: “Seville was good, we weren’t!”

Both conclusions were correct. It fit the Spaniards formidably into the concept that they could contribute to the mental fatigue of their opponent early on with their ball skill and their passing fireworks. In the end, Sevilla had over 60 percent possession of the ball, which was the foundation for coach Julen Lopetegui’s team to be way ahead in all other relevant statistics: passes played, passes received, chances to score – the dominance was overwhelming over long distances. The second goal came relatively late, Rafa Mir scored in the 7th minute of stoppage time.

To make matters worse was the high error rate of the Wolfsburg, on the defensive, but also in their own attacks. In its rare forays, VfL, like Wolfgang Kubicki, got tangled up when he made his suggestions for pandemic crisis management in talk shows: There was no overflowing idea, and improvisation alone rarely does justice to the complexity of a strong opponent. In the end, Lower Saxony could only show one successful attack, but Nmecha’s shot jumped from Sevilla goalkeeper Bono to the crossbar and not over the line (23rd). The striker who was so accurate recently, and that is probably the bitterest souvenir from Andalusia, will miss the last game of the group stage due to a yellow card suspension.

Kohfeldt loses his first game as Wolfsburg coach

“We didn’t reach our limits today,” said Kohfeldt, who, after weeks of upturn, had to accept his first defeat as a manager in Wolfsburg. However – and the self-critical coach did not want to hide this – fluctuations had already occurred within the games, which still deny VfL access to the VIP area of ​​the national and international top. Indeed: In the end, the number of points was correct, but the previous Bundesliga successes against Augsburg and Bielefeld were unadorned and laborious victories achieved with great effort.

Unlike his predecessor van Bommel, Kohfeldt does not want to name fate as complicit. The team in Seville was not lacking in general willingness anyway, said the coach. Rather, Kohfeldt advocated the thesis that the implementation of his tactical guidelines could have fallen victim to the over-motivation of the protagonists. After all, and mathematician Edward N. Lorenz would not contradict that, the chain of events is still in the hands of VfL: A home win against Lille in two weeks would be enough to pass the French and make it into the second round of the premier class.

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