It was probably foreseeable that Max Kruse and Niko Kovac would no longer be friends in this life. Now the ex-kicker has dished out a lot against his former coach in his podcast.
“I actually only had one example where I would say: absolute disaster in terms of character. Niko Kovac,” said Max Kruse in his podcast “Flatterball” against his ex-coach at VfL Wolfsburg.
Under the Croatian, today’s Baller League team manager (the top game live on free TV and on JOYN every Monday from 8:15 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.) only played five Bundesliga games before his contract was terminated in November 2022 .
Kruse sees himself in a number of players who suddenly played a smaller role under Kovac: “Niko has his own special way of shaping a team. I think he wants to show relatively early on that he is the top dog. That He is the ultimate. In all of the clubs where he was coach, he shaved off an undisputed player relatively quickly. In Monaco, captain Wissam Ben Yedder, Alex Meier at Eintracht Frankfurt, Thomas Müller at Bayern. And then stop by Wolfsburg. “
The 35-year-old can only speculate about the reasons: “They are all opinionated players and top performers. He always shaved his head. I ask myself: Why do you do that? Are you so selfish? Or are you so dissatisfied with yourself? “
the essentials in brief
When Kovac was hired as Wolfsburg coach, it became clear to him that his time at the club was over. He had Marcel Schäfer (then sports director of VfL Wolfsburg, Anm. d. Red.) asked to “find a solution”. The club then assured him that Kovac would rely on him.
“Then I came to Wolfsburg and, for my standards, prepared myself really well in my own preparation, put my foot down, ran endlessly and came back to Wolfsburg with a really good level of fitness. A week after the transfer window closed, the call came “The coach came in and said: Max, you don’t give the team any input, you won’t play games under me anymore. Then I think to myself: How anti-social is that,” Kruse continued.
Teammates joked: “He has no idea, when will he be gone?”
Particularly piquant: Some teammates are also said to have been unconvinced by the ex-Bayern coach’s actions: “We had a group of four with Renato Steffen, Yannick Gerhardt, Luca Waldschmidt and me. If only the four of us were on the training ground, it wasn’t official , but when we played our games afterwards or outside of football, we of course said: He has no idea, when will he be gone and so on.”
While Steffen and Waldschmidt no longer play for Wolfsburg, Gerhardt has made 22 appearances across all competitions this season.
2024-03-15 10:36:00
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