ALed by national team captain Alexandra Popp with a green and white turban, the VfL Wolfsburg footballers stormed to their seventh German championship title. With a 10-1 (5-0) win at FC Carl Zeiss Jena, the team from Lower Saxony made everything clear on Sunday, as expected. Last year’s title winner FC Bayern Munich can no longer catch up with their rivals on the last day of the game.
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In front of just 760 spectators, the women from Wolfsburg quickly made things clear. Ewa Pajor (8th minute), Sveindis Jonsdottir (10th), Felicitas Rauch (25th) and Lena Lattwein (38th) as well as Tina Kremlitschka (18th) with an own goal ensured a 5-0 break. After the restart, Jill Roord (46′), Popp (57′), Tabea Waßmuth (81′), Pauline Bremer (83′) and Svenja Huth (85′) scored the highest win of the season. Jena captain Julia Arnold reduced the gap to 1:7 (79th).
National striker Popp had to have her head bandaged after just a few minutes due to a laceration. The championship trophy will be awarded next Sunday in the home game against Bayer Leverkusen.
successful change
For coach Tommy Stroot (33) it is the first triumph in the Bundesliga. Wolfsburg had even won the title four times in a row between 2017 and 2020 and has now drawn level with 1. FFC Frankfurt with a total of seven wins.
Many did not expect to replace FC Bayern as the best German team after just one season after the upheaval at VfL last summer. In the past two years, influential figures such as champion coach Stephan Lerch or top star Pernille Harder have left the club, and Popp was injured for the entire first half of the season. After this season, the internationals Almuth Schult (Angel City FC) and Turid Knaak (end of career) will leave.
Stroot formed a successful team around new faces such as top scorer Tabea Waßmuth and Roord from the Netherlands, brought in from Arsenal. “It’s wonderful to see what has come of it,” said goalkeeper Schult. With her successor Merle Frohms (Frankfurt), the number one in the DFB selection, and the great German hope for the future Jule Brand from TSG 1899 Hoffenheim, the next well-known transfers for the coming season are already certain.
After winning the championship early, the Wolfsburg women also want to win the DFB Cup for the eighth time in a row. The final against Turbine Potsdam will take place on May 28th in Cologne.
And while his many national players travel on to the European Championships in England shortly afterwards, coach Stroot finally has a little time to work through this particularly emotional season. In the Champions League, his team played in the semifinals at FC Barcelona in front of a world record crowd of 91,648 spectators and lost 5-1. At the beginning of April, the women of Wolfsburg sent their long-time rival FC Bayern home 6-0.
