Crash of a highly praised: How Florian Kohfeldt fights for his career

Florian Kohfeldt was happy with what he saw of his team in the game against RB Leipzig. Chewing gum, he enthusiastically high-fived his players. After all: It was zero to zero, his team had shown a good performance. “We controlled possession well in the first 25 minutes and had two very big chances,” said Kohfeldt later. He spoke of seeing “steps forward” in terms of attitude and content.

The only problem was: When Kohfeldt high-fived his professionals, only 45 minutes had been played in the Leipzig stadium and the team was on its way to the half-time break. Kohfeldt was right with his analysis. For a while, Wolfsburg played well, snappy and with commitment. But that only worked until the 76th minute, when Leipzig scored the opening goal. A little later, the wolves conceded the second goal, the game was lost 0:2.

For Florian Kohfeldt, failure would be a total crash

It was the ninth defeat in the past eleven games including the cup. In the Bundesliga, Wolfsburg scored a meager two points from nine games and was passed down to 15th place in the table, two points ahead of the relegation place. The club is going through one of its worst crises ever. Everything should get better with Kohfeldt. After the ninth matchday, he took over the team as the successor to Mark van Bommel, who failed with a crash, in ninth place in the table. But after some initial successes, the crisis hit again. The supposed savior Kohfeldt does not get the problems under control.

For him, the once celebrated young star among German coaches, it is an explosive situation at this point in his career. A total crash is imminent.

At the age of just 35, he was promoted to head coach from Werder Bremen in October 2017. The newcomer, who received numerous advance praise, delivered. Kohfeldt led the troubled team to eleventh place in the table at the end of the season. In the next season, Bremen even finished eighth under his direction, the best placing for Bremen in years. He was voted DFB coach of the year. The eloquent coach was the darling of the media, a shooting star as he is in the book. In Bremen they dreamed of a new, great coaching era like Otto Rehhagel and Thomas Schaaf once did. They also took the word Europa League back into their mouths on the Weser. The dreams could be summarized under the name Florian Kohfeldt.

But then the mistakes began. Kohfeldt himself and the club management were blinded by their own past and former size. And misjudged the situation.

impact in reality

What followed was the hard serve in reality. With Max Kruse, the team lost their most important player, Kohfeldt overestimated the successors and spoke strongly. Werder fought for two years against relegation, which eventually became a bitter reality. One of the reasons was that the coach changed his unattractive defensive tactics ten games before the end of the season and eleven points ahead of the relegation place, apparently because he overestimated himself and his team. As a result, the team lost all games. Werder fired their former favorite after the penultimate day and got relegated. Of course, it wasn’t Kohfeldt’s fault alone, but the coach was partly responsible.

And now Wolfsburg. Managing Director Jörg Schmadtke signed Kohfeldt in October to stabilize and restore a team with great potential that was on the wane under van Bommel. Last season, Wolfsburg managed to qualify directly for the Champions League in fourth place under coach Oliver Glasner. The team played like a well-oiled machine and goalscorer Wout Weghorst scored at will. The acute crisis can be identified particularly well on the centre-forward. Like other top performers, he is only a shadow of himself, the Dutchman has scored a total of six goals in the Bundesliga so far. The frustration runs deep in the team: “If you have shit on your feet, it just sucks,” said midfielder Maximilian Arnold, describing the sadness.

Kohfeldt has not yet managed to get the badly battered team back on track. He owes the fact that he is still a coach at all to two circumstances. First, he is Schmadtke’s husband. The fact that successful coach Glasner left the wolves was partly due to the rift with the conflict-loving Schmadtke. Successor Van Bommel turned out to be a personal mistake and now Kohfeldt should fix it. If he fails, Schmadtke would also have serious problems. Secondly, Schmadtke and sports director Marcel Schäfer never tire of emphasizing that Kohfeldt has taken over many of his predecessor’s problems and that it takes time to fix them.

Kohfeldt runs out of arguments

But after eleven games without a win, Kohfeldt (and also Schmadtke) run out of arguments. Apparently, the coach does not succeed in giving the team back the necessary self-confidence and self-image. Already in Bremen, Kohfeldt noticed that he described the situation rhetorically and always saw positive tendencies, but often seemed helpless. It’s fair to say that he’s always protective of his team and speaks hard about it. The question remains whether he is overdoing it. On the outside, it often sounds like nice talk.

In just under two weeks, Kohfeldt will have a real final against bottom SpVgg Greuther Fürth after the international break. If you don’t win, he’s gone. He would then have failed under pressure for the second time, albeit under extremely difficult conditions. That too is part of the truth. His career as a Bundesliga coach would be over for the time being. It would be the crash of a once celebrated coaching talent.

Sources: DPA, ,