New Wolfsburg coach: Will Hasenhüttl follow Kovac?

The Wolfsburg team confirmed their separation from Niko Kovac on Sunday after a sporting decline. According to the “Bild” newspaper and the trade magazine “kicker”, the clear favorite to succeed him is Ralph Hasenhüttl. According to consistent media reports, the Styrian should lead the training on Tuesday.

Hasenhüttl (56) most recently worked at English Premier League club Southampton from 2018 to November 2022. The former ÖFB team striker has already looked after FC Ingolstadt and RB Leipzig in the German Bundesliga. Wolfsburg are still winless after ten league games in 2024 and have slipped to 14th place in the table. On Saturday there was a 3-1 home defeat against FC Augsburg, in which Wimmer was ruled out shortly before half-time.

Only won 2 out of 20 league games

The former Salzburg kicker and assistant coach Kovac moved to Wolfsburg in 2022 with high expectations. In his first season, the Croatian narrowly missed out on a Europa League place with the ambitious VW club. There was no further sporting development in the current season. VfL has only won two of the last 20 league games. The first game after the international break will be against Werder Bremen on March 30th.

Wimmer was a regular player under Kovac last year, but this season the 22-year-old offensive man was set back by a torn syndesmosis in his ankle. The Lower Austrian made his comeback at the end of February; the unfortunate game against Augsburg was his first in the starting line-up since the injury. Wimmer gave Wolfsburg the lead in the ninth minute, but was then wrongly shown a red card when the score was 1-0. He wasn’t last man when he fouled outside the penalty area. Substitute goalkeeper Pervan replaced the injured Koen Casteels in goal.

Wolfsburg’s lead over the relegation place, which FSV Mainz currently occupies, is now only six points. “We regret the development and believe it is necessary to give the team a new impetus in order to stabilize the situation,” said VfL managing director Marcel Schäfer, explaining the separation from Kovac. “Of course, as head coach, I am particularly disappointed that we were unable to achieve a turnaround despite promising approaches,” Kovac was quoted as saying in a club statement.

Assistants also have to go

In addition to the former Croatian team boss and Bayern Munich coach, his assistants Aaron Briggs and brother Robert Kovac also have to go. In addition to favorite Hasenhüttl, with whom, according to “kicker”, they are about to conclude a deal, two men with a Salzburg past have also been rumored as possible Kovac successors in the past few weeks: Matthias, who moved to Al-Ahli in Saudi Arabia in the previous summer, and the former Liefering coach Bo Svensson, who resigned from Mainz at the beginning of November.