Can VfB Stuttgart repeat last year's success?

Can VfB Stuttgart repeat the successful 2023/24 season? Gegenpressing spoke to players, club officials and former legends to find out.

What can we expect from VfB Stuttgart this year? It is a tricky question to answer at this point. On the one hand, Stuttgart lost key players Hiroki Ito (Bayern Munich), Waldemar Anton, and Serhou Guirassy (both Dortmund). On the other hand, Emerdin Demirovic (Augsburg) and the permanent transfer of Deniz Undav are substantial additions.

Then there is the DFL Supercup final in which Stuttgart at times outplayed Leverkusen but, ultimately, once again failed to defeat last year’s double-winners. “It is the quality of Leverkusen that they can come back in the last minute,” head of the first team at VfB Stuttgart, Christian Gentner, said after the penalty shootout defeat. “Still, you can also see that our level is still quite high again and that we can keep it up during the season.”

Stuttgart’s Supercup performance was indeed impressive. They finished the game with 63% possession and 541 vs 279 passes. Sure, some of that can be explained by Stuttgart being a man up from the 37th minute onwards. But even when it was still XI vs XI, Stuttgart seemed the more dominant of the two teams.

Just like last year then, Stuttgart seemed at times the closest to finally breaking Leverkusen’s uncanny domestic unbeaten streak. But ultimately, it was once again not quite enough, a fact that star striker Deniz Undav quickly pointed out after the game.

“It wasn’t a warning shot at anybody,” Undav said when asked whether Stuttgart could finish ahead of Bayern again. “We have to see how we will deal with fighting on multiple fronts this upcoming season. The most important thing is to play a quiet season and see what happens.”