The Bundesliga soccer team VfL Wolfsburg separated from coach Paul Simonis after just four months. The club confirmed this in the evening. Previously, among others, Bildnewspaper and the TV station Sky reported on it. The team will be taken over by U19 head coach Daniel Bauer until further notice.
“The decision to release Paul Simonis was not an easy one for us,” said managing director Peter Christiansen. “We really valued his work, his ideas and also his interaction with the team – that’s exactly why this step hurts me personally. Nevertheless, we have to be honest: in football, results and points count in the end, and the development in the last few weeks has not gone as we all hoped.”
With the dismissal of Simonis, who only came to Wolfsburg in the summer as Ralph Hasenhüttl’s successor, the club is reacting to the current sporting crisis. On Friday, VfL lost 1:2 against Werder Bremen and is in the bottom third of the table with just eight points. The club was only able to win two of the first ten Bundesliga games. In the DFB Cup, Wolfsburg was eliminated in the second round by second division club Holstein Kiel.
Successor not yet determined
The 40-year-old Simonis wanted to aim for the Europa League places with VfL Wolfsburg. In Wolfsburg he was supposed to give the team a new face and a new style of play with more dominance and ball possession.
Simonis is the fifth coach in Wolfsburg since Oliver Glasner led the club to the Champions League in 2021 and then left. Who will succeed Simonis should be announced soon. Urs Fischer, Tim Walter and also former coach Bruno Labbadia are currently considered possible candidates.
Before the Dutchman went to VfL, Simonis surprisingly won the Dutch Cup in his debut season as head coach with the Go Ahead Eagles from Deventer.
