Schmadtke angrily counters the accusation
Max Kruse takes a tough stance against former coach Niko Kovac
March 15, 2024, 10:02 p.m
In 2022, coach Niko Kovac will cut his most prominent striker from the VfL Wolfsburg squad. A year and a half later, Max Kruse massively attacks him in his podcast. A counterattack follows immediately. The then managing director Jörg Schmadtke sees it as a “bottomless impudence.”
Shortly before the supposed game of fate for Niko Kovac as coach of VfL Wolfsburg, former VfL professional Max Kruse caused great unrest at the Bundesliga club. Kruse heavily criticized Kovac a year and a half after his retirement from Wolfsburg. The then VfL managing director Jörg Schmadtke immediately defended himself in similarly clear terms. The Wolfsburg team are still without a win in the new year, which is why they have a home game against FC Augsburg on Saturday (3.30 p.m./Sky and in the live ticker at ntv.de) is most likely also about Kovac’s job.
In his career he has experienced “only one example with numerous coaches where I say: absolute disaster in terms of character,” Kruse said about Kovac in the podcast “Flatterball”, which he runs together with his friend and long-time teammate Martin Harnik.
“Niko has his special way of training a team: He wants to show relatively early on that he is the top dog,” said Kruse. “In all the clubs where he was a coach, he shaved an undisputed player relatively quickly: Ben Yedder, captain at the time, at Monaco. Alex Meier at Frankfurt. Thomas Müller at Bayern. And then hold me at Wolfsburg.” The 35-year-old asks himself: “Is this uncertainty? Is it calculation? Or is it just coincidence?”
Exchange of blows with Jogi Löw too
The VfL coach cut the former national player from his squad a year and a half ago. However, for Kovac and also for the then Wolfsburg sports director Schmadtke, there were good reasons for this decision at the time. He missed “the 100% identification and concentration with a focus on VfL. We didn’t have that feeling with Max,” said Kovac at the time. Schmadtke reacted even more clearly to Kruse’s statements on Friday. “I have the feeling that Max Kruse has a disturbed perception. The fact that people like him talk about character leaves me helpless,” said the long-time Bundesliga manager to the “Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung”. Kruse’s statements are a “bottomless impudence.”
Most recently, Kruse had an exchange of blows with Joachim Löw. “The fact that a former national coach who is not known for getting out of his skin reacts like that to something like this actually says it all,” said Kruse. Löw had previously denied Kruse’s claim in a TV interview with “Bild Sport” that the reason for his non-consideration for the 2014 World Cup was women’s visit to his hotel room the night before the international match in England in November 2013. “The truth is: He just wasn’t good enough,” said Löw. “We wanted to become world champions in football – and not in poker.”
“If there really wasn’t any truth behind what I said, you wouldn’t go into it like that,” countered Kruse: “Then you would say it was because of the performance. If he had just said that, nobody would have anything said. But it seemed a bit disrespectful.” The criticism makes “no sense,” said the 35-year-old, who ended his active career last November. “Not for me anyway, because I know what it was like. But it basically makes no sense to say I wasn’t good enough and then invite me back two months later after the World Cup. Then apparently I was good enough again. “