Wolfsburg – The surprise team of the season

The poll on this site for the last several weeks has asked who the surprise team was in the 2008-09 season.

There have been several votes for Fulham who transformed themselves from relegation candidates into a side that qualified for Europe. They truly have been a revelation over the past few months and manager Roy Hodgson deserves all the credit in the world for the way he has turned things around at Craven Cottage.

Winner

However, the clear winner in the poll is the Bundesliga side Wolsburg. How many people tipped them to win the league at the start of the season? I certainly wish I had because I would guess the odds on that very thing happening would have been very attractive indeed.

Many people thought that Jurgen Klinsmann would lead Bayern Munich to title glory. If it wasn’t to be Bayern who took the honours then it would be Stuttgart, Hamburg or Borussia Dortmund.

History

Wolfsburg would not even have been an outside bet. Their history shows that this was their first major success.

The club was not formed until 1938 and didn’t become recognisable as the Wolfsburg club we know now until 1945. When all the club’s players left later that same year, Wolfsburg was nearly confined to the history pages as the shortest lasting football club in the world.

They recovered from that early crisis to make steady progress and won a few national amateur titles. By the time the first professional German League was formed, the Budesliga in 1963, Wolfsburg were in the third tier.

Flirted

They flirted with promotion via the play-offs a couple of times through the seventies and eighties until finally, in 1992, play-off success saw them promoted to the second division of the Bundesliga.

In 1995 Wolfsburg made their one and only appearance in the German Cup final where they lost 3-0 to Borussia Munchengladbach. That big day out was followed in 1997 by the greatest achievement in their history at that time when a second place finish saw them promoted into the top tier of German football.

Mid-table

Despite all predictions saying that Wolfsburg would soon drop back out of the Bundesliga, they quickly established themselves as a mid-table team. In 1999 they finished as high as sixth place, but two fifteenth placed finishes in 2006 and 2007 saw them only narrowly avoid relegation.

Felix Magath, the former Bayern Munich man, took over the reins for the 2007-08 season and he took them to a quite remarkable fifth place finish in the league, the highest in their history and qualification for the UEFA Cup.

Magath stayed with the club and rather than proving to be a one season wonder he then led his team to the last thirty-two of the UEFA Cup where they lost to Paris St Germain and incredibly, the 2008-09 Bundesliga title. On the way they created a record of recording ten consecutive wins.

Worthy

There is absolutely no doubt that Wolfsburg are worthy winners of the surprise team of the season title as what they have achieved would have raised several eyebrows if it had been written as fiction.

Can they continue their success by defending their Bundesliga title or doing well in the Champions League? I wouldn’t bet on either of those things happening but then again, I wouldn’t have bet on them doing what they did last season either.

It is better to congratulate Wolsburg on what they have achieved and let them revel in the glory than it is to ponder on where they go from here. The one thing going against them is that they will no longer be a ‘surprise’ team next season.