Bundesliga: limbo in Wolfsburg: Kruse is training again

So now nest boxes. Max Kruse is no longer allowed to play Bundesliga football at VfL Wolfsburg, but the club’s best-known player is back, at least marginally, in almost everything else.

During training in the morning, he was sometimes sent to goalkeeper practice. In the early afternoon he then supported a special social commitment by VfL. Once a year, the players work on selected projects in the region. Some shared the food in the Wolfsburg hospital, others beautified the outdoor area of ​​a day care center. Kruse, together with national striker Alexandra Popp and Croatian newcomer Bartol Franjic, was part of the group that built a fence and nesting boxes for birds in an animal health practice in the small town of Bokelberge in the Gifhorn district.

Kruse is formally part of the team

VfL and the former national player have been in a kind of limbo since coach Niko Kovac and the sporting management informed him the day before the 1-0 win at Eintracht Frankfurt that he would no longer play a game for the club. He is not allowed to change within Germany or to another top league until the winter. Kruse does not want to go to Greece or Saudi Arabia. And negotiations about triggering his contract, which is valid until 2023, cannot be concluded in a few minutes either, because it is about a severance payment in the millions.

Such a contract termination “would certainly be helpful,” Kovac told the “kicker”. “But if it’s not like that, then it’s not like that.” So Kruse is still formally part of the team and therefore also has the right to take part in the training of this team.

Training manager Kovac quickly made it clear on Tuesday that he was only a marginal figure there. Kruse was allowed to complete the warm-up exercises and the final program with everyone else. Game forms and tactical content, on the other hand, are not. During this time he was the only field player to help with goalkeeper training – and that in front of numerous media representatives who had come mainly because of him. “It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary,” Kovac assured. “Today we had 21 field players, then one got hit. That was Max, unfortunately that’s the way it is. If we had had a different form of practice today, he would have been there.” As it is, he has to “work primarily with those who we need at the weekend.”

Kruse shooting the reserve goalkeeper warmly: Whether consciously or unconsciously, this imagery is also a small tit-for-tat from Kovac. Because one of the club’s main accusations against Kruse is that he otherwise constantly presents himself on social networks. When he started a video show on YouTube with his wife or openly chatted about working only four hours a day for his million-dollar salary, to the annoyance of VfL and VW, he also ignored the tense situation at his club and its parent company.

Cult trainer strengthens Kovac’s back

The former Wolfsburg master trainer Felix Magath therefore considers Kruse’s expulsion to be correct. “A player can be as good as he wants: if he doesn’t want to fit in, then he can’t play for the club,” said the 69-year-old in an interview with ran.de. “I think Niko Kovac will have made every player an offer to work with him and be successful with him. When there are players in the squad who have their own ideas and believe they are so good that they only have to do that what they think is right, the coach has a problem.” Kovac “did everything right” and VfL “must strengthen the coach in such a case”.