It’s Coming Together! | OneFootball

In Hei­den­heim, VfB Stutt­gart secu­res their fourth con­se­cu­ti­ve com­pe­ti­ti­ve win — over­co­ming the night­ma­re of last sea­son, when they couldn’t defeat the new­ly pro­mo­ted side. While the­re are still a few hic­cups here and the­re and some play­ers are miss­ing, the team seems unstoppable in Decem­ber.

If foot­ball had a “step­ping-up-in-a-cri­sis” sta­tis­tic, seve­ral VfB play­ers would sure­ly fea­ture. Last sea­son, Ser­hou Gui­ras­sy and Deniz Undav alter­na­ted in scoring; this sea­son, albeit with fewer goals, Erme­din Demi­ro­vić has step­ped in for his striking col­le­agues, scoring twice in Bre­men. And when he isn’t fin­ding the back of the net, Enzo Mil­lot and, yet again, Nick Wol­te­ma­de step up. Against Uni­on, Wol­te­ma­de alre­a­dy show­ed why the club snap­ped him up on a free trans­fer from Bre­men in the sum­mer. But on the Swa­bi­an Jura, he deli­ver­ed his mas­ter­pie­ce: first assis­ting Maxi Mit­tel­städt and Enzo Millot’s goals, then con­fi­dent­ly grab­bing the ball for a penal­ty and smas­hing it into the net with no-non­sen­se pre­cis­i­on. Game sea­led, and the penal­ty sco­rers’ list shuf­fled a bit.

The 3–1 vic­to­ry against Hei­den­heim was well deser­ved. VfB had ple­nty of con­trol and mana­ged to with­stand the hosts’ aggres­si­ve play wit­hout suc­cum­bing to emo­tio­nal lap­ses them­sel­ves. Once again, the team faced an oppo­nent pres­sing high and defen­ding reso­lut­e­ly at the back. The dif­fe­rence this time, com­pared to recent matches whe­re VfB often had to cha­se an ear­ly defi­cit, was that they alre­a­dy had a goal on the score­board after Maxi Mittelstädt’s bril­li­ant one-two with Wol­te­ma­de. And as with Uni­on, they show­ed they could respond quick­ly: after Wanner’s equa­li­zer, Mil­lot res­to­red the lead befo­re halft­i­me, and Wol­te­ma­de exten­ded it in the second half.

No opponent to build you up

Yes, VfB once again fai­led to keep a clean sheet, but this can curr­ent­ly be over­loo­ked given their redis­co­ver­ed attack­ing pro­wess. The team has scored 11 goals in the past nine days, with con­tri­bu­ti­ons from seven dif­fe­rent play­ers: Wol­te­ma­de (3), Mil­lot (2), Kara­zor, Stil­ler, Füh­rich, Vagno­man, and Kei­tel. While the vic­to­ry against the 16th-pla­ced team may seem like a labo­rious but neces­sa­ry win, it’s worth not­ing how recent­ly the team strug­g­led through games, with results han­ging in the balan­ce until the dying moments. Matches like this show pro­gress: VfB avo­ided beco­ming a con­fi­dence boos­ter for Bochum, Kiel, or Hei­den­heim and should also be well-pre­pared to face the hig­her-pla­ced FC St. Pau­li.

With a home win next weekend, the team could secu­re a Euro­pean spot going into the win­ter break — despi­te inju­ries to three stri­kers and the packed sche­du­le of recent weeks. Lewe­ling and Undav are expec­ted to return at the latest by the second half of the sea­son against Augs­burg. That game at the Neckar­sta­di­on will also pre­sent VfB with their next big oppor­tu­ni­ty: to reach the DFB-Pokal semi-finals for the second time in three years. Of cour­se, the­re are still issues the team needs to address: unneces­sa­ry goals con­ce­ded out of nowhe­re, Alex Nübel’s strug­gles with long-ran­ge shots, Erme­din Demirović’s con­ver­si­on rate, and vul­nerabi­li­ty to cros­ses. I’m not try­ing to paint an over­ly rosy pic­tu­re after this match. At the same time, 23 points from 14 games remain the second-best tal­ly sin­ce the cham­pi­on­ship-win­ning 2006/2007 sea­son. Things may not yet be as smooth as last sea­son, but they’re get­ting the­re.

Titel­bild: © Sebas­ti­an Widmann/Getty Images