Wednesday, December 15, 2021
“The Schmadtke team”
Cologne’s match winner mocks Wolfsburg boss
By Stephan Uersfeld
Cologne striker Anthony Modeste only takes a short run-up and also scores in the third half, the interviews after the game. The match winner at 3: 2 in Wolfsburg buttoned Wolfsburg boss Jörg Schmadtke. He shares a common past with him.
Anthony Modeste was happy. A double pack, three points for a quiet Christmas party and finally time for a personal settlement with Wolfsburg boss Jörg Schmadtke. “I’m happy today because we played against Wolfsburg and won. That’s Schmadtke’s team,” said the match winner on ARD, only to add to Sky: “You always meet twice in life. It’s nice here to win and send Wolfsburg into crisis. “
We’ll come to the crisis along the ICE route between Hanover and Berlin-Spandau in a moment, but first of all we look forward to Modeste’s honest words. A little trash talk on the sidelines of a game has never done any harm, is an essential part of football as an entertainment machine and is always a welcome reason to look back. From 2015 to 2017, the manager and the striker were both under contract with 1.FC Cologne. Those were successful times, Modeste met and scored and with his 25 goals in the 2016/2017 season, the Frenchman led Effzeh into the Europa League. The fans dedicated songs to him. He was her hero. Then it got dirty and broke.
Good money in distant China
What we know: After a long, long transfer haggling, Modeste switched to the Chinese Super League, which was very popular at the time for financial reasons. A sporty step into insignificance, but good money for the club and also for the player. Tianjin Quanjian was the name of the club that the then 29-year-old joined after a long excitement.
Tianjin Quanjian had just been promoted to the House of Lords, planning big like everyone else. It was shortly after the signing of a far-reaching football agreement between Germany and China that said little, but at least caused a stir and upheaval at the highest political level. During the game between TSV Schott Mainz and the Chinese U20 national team, which was suddenly part of the Regionalliga Südwest, there was a scandal in quotation marks. Half a dozen spectators hung a Tibetan flag. What an affront. The game was interrupted. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spoke of disrespect and soon afterwards the China project in the Southwest Regional League was crushed.
By then, in the winter of 2017/2018, Modeste was already in China to get back on track. Will it be voluntary or not? The views drifted apart. Modeste claimed to have stayed in Cologne and Schmadtke the opposite. He accused the striker of lying. Shortly afterwards Schmadtke was also gone from Cologne, the team fell deeply and was relegated.
In China, Tianjin Quanjian hit the headlines for a lack of salary payments (and completely disappeared from the scene in 2020). Modeste returned to the Rhine, looked for its old form for a few years. He has it again under the new trainer Steffen Baumgart. Ten hits in 16 league games and two in the cup. A great record for the 33-year-old, for whom the two goals against Wolfsburg were more than just winning goals.
Regardless of the wonderfully rowdy statements by Modest, the defeat hits Wolfsburg hard. The cold December wind on the Mittelland Canal has long since blown away all hopes. Under the second coach of the season, under the former Bremen trainer Florian Kohfeldt, who succeeded short-term coach Mark von Bommel, everything has only got worse: the sobering end in the Champions League, a dramatic fall in the league, a total of six defeats in series, the last win in early November. A few months after moving into the European premier class, the Volkswagen Club is back in the lower parts of the Bundesliga.
“It’s bitter. It’s a very big disappointment, another setback,” said Wolfsburg sporting director Marcel Schäfer after the game, from which Kohfeldt – who was nicknamed “Ko again” six months after his relegation with Werder Bremen -Feldt “had to fight – nothing but disappointment. “You saw what we wanted. But we didn’t make enough of it. In the end, you shouldn’t concede such goals. That’s why we can’t talk about a good game today,” said Kohfeldt.
At the end of the year, he and his team take one more trip to doom. On the last matchday of the first half of the season, it will be played against the mighty Bavarians in the Allianz Arena on Friday. Then there could be seven defeats in a row. And the cushion on the relegation rank will then only be a few points. Land under on the Mittelland Canal.