Stuttgart Stun Only Some
May 19, 2007
Rarely has a soccer club been so richly awarded for their courage as VfB Stuttgart, with the Bundesliga title almost their own and a domestic double within reach.
Saturday's 3-2 comeback win at VfL Bochum gave Stuttgart the league lead into the final game with Energie Cottbus and underlined the awesome strength of a team which has been built over the past 11 months.
Stuttgart lead Schalke, who crashed 2-0 in Dortmund, by two points and should lift the trophy on Saturday in front of a home crowd. On May 26, they meet Nuremberg in the German Cup final in what could result in the first double in club history.
Confronted with expensive players who performed below par, cash-strapped Stuttgart took the daring move last summer of making a total overhaul instead of getting only new players for certain positions.
Jon Dahl Tomasson, Jesper Gronkjaer, Christian Tiffert, Andreas Hinkel, Zvonimir Soldo, Danijel Ljuboja were retired or had to leave as new sports director Horst Heldt and coach Armin (following Matthias Sammer and Giovanni Trapattoni) made sweeping changes.
"The former team put together without love was made up of Sammer-players who Trapattoni didn't want and of Trapattoni-players who Veh didn't want," the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote before going on to call the changes the biggest in league history.
An overhaul "without mercy"
But the changes were necessary for the team to have any success, according to Heldt.
"You couldn't continue with the old squad," he said. "We had to risk the overhaul because the former team was driving the people out of the stadium. We did the overhaul without mercy."
The result was stunning.
An old guard of Fernando Meira, Ludovic Magnin, Brazilian forward Cacau, goalkeeper Timo Hildebrand and midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger was joined by newcomers like Mario Gomez, Serdar Tasci, Roberto Hilbert and Antonio da Silva, who all made a big impact.
Heldt said Stuttgart carefully chose the new players but admitted that "you couldn't expect that it would work so well."
Reliable weekly performances
Stuttgart, who only claimed the Bundesliga's top spot once before the season's final two weeks, were long vying for third place, but more became possible because they didn't have a slump like the title rivals Schalke or Werder Bremen.
It didn't even matter that Gomez was sidelined for two months after scoring 14 goals until then. He only returned Saturday to score the important 2-2 equalizer in Bochum.
"We showed all season that we are a team," said Saturday's match-winner Cacau said.
Stuttgart became invincible on the home stretch, winning the last seven games after an unlucky 1-0 defeat at Schalke in mid-March.
Many experts predicted over the past two weeks that Stuttgart were the team to look out for in the title race because they had nothing to lose.
Who "deserves" to win?
"Stuttgart played a sensational season," said Bayern Munich coach Ottmar Hitzfeld in admiration of the team where he formerly played.
Former Germany player Paul Breitner said on Sunday in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that "Stuttgart deserves the title."
Bremen were unable to maintain their autumn form and Schalke lost the last two away games, cracking under pressure just like in 2001. That year they lost the title on the last play of the season to Bayern Munich, but a 1-0 defeat in Stuttgart the week before was the crucial setback.
As a result, many said that Schalke, who once again appear not to be able to shake their reputation as perennial runners-up, now deserved the first national title since 1958, including German soccer supremo Theo Zwanziger who said "the time was ripe" for them to succeed.
That remark led to the only major outburst of anger from Stuttgart this season.
"I was very upset when I read the statements from Zwanziger that it would be only just if Schalke won the title," Veh said. "What is supposed to be just about that?"
Now Veh -- and his players -- will likely take even more pride when they are expected to receive the trophy for their fifth German title overall and first since 1992 on Saturday.