The footballers of VfL Wolfsburg will welcome Bundesliga rivals SGS Essen for the semi-finals of the DFB Cup on Saturday. For the people of Lower Saxony, it’s about the last possible title – earlier than it has been in a long time.
“Herbstmeister” Wolfsburg started the year 2024 with a floodlight show on Essen’s Hafenstrasse. 3,842 spectators watched the supposedly smallest club in the league as Essen initially took a 1-0 lead, but then the “Welves” bit into the game and ultimately won 3-1. VfL defended its lead in the table and looked optimistically into the championship race.
“After last weekend, the focus has shifted dramatically towards this competition. We definitely want to win the cup again.”
— VfL defense chief Dominique Janssen
Almost exactly two months later, however, the tide turned completely. After a draw in Leverkusen and defeats in Hoffenheim and in the top league game against Munich, Wolfsburg is now seven points behind Bayern in first place. The championship trophy is gone.
And so everything in Wolfsburg is now concentrating on the DFB Cup: In the semi-finals, coach Tommy Stroot’s team will host the SGS on Holy Saturday (1 p.m./in the NDR Livecenter) and play for the chance of the last title of the season. In the second semi-final, Bayern Munich and Eintracht Frankfurt will face each other on Easter Sunday (3:45 p.m.). The final will take place on May 9th in Cologne.
Wolfsburg – Essen met in the final in 2020
In their semi-final, the Lower Saxony team are clearly favored against the sixth-place team in the Bundesliga. But Essen has already proven several times what is possible in the cup. In 2014 – at that time with Wolfsburg’s defense chief Dominique Janssen on the pitch – and in 2020 the Sportgemeinschaft Essen-Schönebeck 19/68 e. V. even in the final. Ten years ago there was a 3-0 defeat against 1. FFC Frankfurt. Six years later, Essen forced Wolfsburg into a penalty shootout, but had to admit defeat again.
“I had to nibble on this defeat for a long time,” Markus Högner, who was already Essen’s coach back then, recently told “kicker”. “VfL is of course striving to at least win this title now that the championship has probably been decided in Bayern’s favor,” added the 56-year-old, who was assistant coach at Wolfsburg from May 2018 to January 2019. “But we still think we have opportunities.”
DFB Cup is exactly Wolfsburg’s “thing”
Janssen warns that “something crazy can always happen” in the cup. But their own cup series of nine titles in a row (ten in total) is also crazy. And continuing this is now the big goal. “I think it’s been a long time since we lost two games in a row. That’s why I think the focus has shifted dramatically towards this competition after last weekend,” emphasized the Dutchwoman. “We also know that the cup has been our thing in recent years and we definitely want to win it again this season.”
The continuation of another impressive series would help: goalkeeper Merle Frohms has not conceded a goal this cup season.
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sports club | 31.03.2024 | 10:50 p.m