After last season, Wolfsburg were one of the hottest teams in Europe. They'd stormed through the Bundesliga to finish second in the league behind nigh-unbeatable Bayern Munich -- and actually managed to soundly beat Bayern to start off a second half of the season that saw them lose only twice in league after that, as well as go on to win the DFB-Pokal.
Wolfsburg are a scary Champions League matchup if Julian Draxler is at his best
Wolfsburg and Draxler are still figuring out how best to coexist, but if they figure it out they will be a force to be reckoned with.
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This season, though, they've scuffled and struggled, thanks in large part to losing star playmaker Kevin De Bruyne in the transfer market. His replacement, 22-year-old starlet Julian Draxler, is an incredibly gifted young player, but one that both his old team Schalke and various levels of the German national team never really figured out how to use properly. Both Draxler and Wolfsburg have suffered from wildly inconsistent form this season, but over the last few weeks they seem to have been figuring things out, with their vital Champions League win over Manchester United on Tuesday serving as proof positive of that.
Credit: user Omar_Til_Death on r/soccer
This was the highlight of Draxler’s day, an eye-popping run and a couple of lovely passes to set up Vieirinha’s goal, Wolfsburg’s second on the day and the one that shoved the match’s momentum firmly in their favor for almost all of the remainder of the game. It was a wonderful moment, and one that will surely show up on highlight reels set to awful music for the rest of his career, and it was one of many positive moments Draxler had during the game.
All game long, Draxler used both his skill making runs with and without the ball to unsettle Manchester United’s defense, and then used his passing skills to take advantage of their shakiness. He was the star of the show, the pièce de résistance of an impressive attacking display by the German side. And if he and Wolfsburg can keep this up, if they can prove that this isn’t just some flukish uptick that can’t be sustained, then not only will they rise far above their current fifth-place standing in the Bundesliga -- they’ll be a dark-horse contender for Champions League success.
Now, that’s not to say that Wolfsburg will end the season lifting the highest club team honor in Europe high above their heads. But with Draxler playing well, they become significantly more dangerous, and a big risk to virtually any team they face. Their dynamic attack represents a matchup nightmare for any defense, and trying to figure out how to stop them with an in-form Draxler leading an attack that can strike from anywhere and at any time will give managers some pretty serious indigestion.
Are Wolfsburg a finished product? No. Far from it. Their defense tends to get exposed because of the weight they put into their attack. A good counter-attacking team can tear them to shreds. Their form has been a bit chaotic and unpredictable between that and their struggles to adapt to life without De Bruyne, because it’s only been recently that Draxler has started to look like he’s becoming the player we’ve long thought he could be.
But if Draxler really is coming into his own, and this isn’t just a flash in the pan, that inconsistency could become frightening consistency. If he really is the star he can be, it’s not just Germany and the Bundesliga that need to be on notice -- it’s every team Wolfsburg play in the Champions League that need to be ready for the nightmare they’re about to face.
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