Picture perfect
IN terms of European soccer, the name VfL Wolfsburg does not mean much - indeed, the club's only claim to fame much like the city is that it is home to the giant German car manufacturer Volkswagen. For many years VfL were known sarcastically in the Bundesliga as 'the factory team'.
The put-down is far from fair, even though VW have a huge influence on the VfL set up no more obviously than at the club's magnificent new €53m home, the unsurprisingly named Volkswagen Arena, a multi-adaptable stadium capable of seating 30,000 people, all under cover.
This architectural triumph of glass and steel is the focal point of a new era for this traditionally most unfashionable of clubs which, since its promotion to the Bundesliga in 1977, has focused completely on the development of a new entity a new brand, as the club likes to couch it.
This new brand is ultimately designed to become a kingpin of European soccer, much in the same way as the city of Wolfsburg itself is reinventing itself as a city of class, culture and modernity, instead of its traditional image as a gloomy, heartless industrial sprawl.
The Volkswagen Arena was opened in December of last year after some 18 months of planning and a further 18 months of construction. It is part of an urban renewal programme which has soaked up some €800 million and, to a caustic Irish eye, sanitised by the seemingly never-ending horse-trading over the development of a new national stadium here, it is something truly to behold.
It is an even greater source of wonderment when you discover exactly how it was funded and developed and how it has changed the public perception of 'the factory team' into that of a modern dynamic club which is going places fast.
Kurt Rippholz, VfL's press officer, says that in 1997, when the club was promoted to the Bundesliga, it was realised that their old 21,000 seater stadium, built in the 1950's and sited down the road from the new arena, was not going to fulfil the needs of an ambitious go-ahead club with a vision of marketing, sales and fan development.
The club, in tandem with the city of Wolfsburg and Volkswagen, set in train the building of a new stadium with the city coming up with half the capital cost and private investors VW AG mainly accounting for the rest.
"Once the decision was made to build," Rippholz says, "everything else happened fairly quickly. It was 16 to 18 months in the design phase and, after the groundstone was laid in May 2000, the arena itself was completed in a record 18 months."
The stadium is now owned and run by a company called Wolfsburg AG, which is owned 50:50 by the city and VW and VfL have a long-term lease on it.
Interestingly, especially in the context of some of the plans unveiled for various Irish stadia, soccer is the prime function of the arena and it is through the game alone that the venture has to turn a profit.
"Football is the core business and that consists of 17 home games in the Bundesliga and various other home matches in domestic cups of one sort or another," Rippholz says. "We do have other events in the arena, but they are not necessary for it to make a profit. We can put 35,000 people in for a concert, as we did in July of this year, but concerts are not necessary for profitability. That is important not only for our supporters, but also our reputation as a club.
"What we have tried to do is create an atmosphere where when people come along for whatever reason, be it sport or music they discover an experience they want to be able to repeat. We want them to say: 'I will get this feeling again'.
"For Bundesliga games we will seat 22,000 people with another 8,000 standing. For international fixtures we translate the 8,000 standing spaces into another 4,000 seats and that gives us a capacity of 26,000 for FIFA or UEFA fixtures.
"We also hosted an international for the first time this summer a friendly between Germany and Canada and the team spent the whole week here training. That was good exposure for us."
The all-pervasive influence of VW on Wolfsburg is unsurprising and it is therefore equally unsurprising that the development of the Volkswagen Arena is part of a complete urban regeneration which has transformed the former site of the car factory's electricity generating plant into something of a VW theme park, where people who have purchased their new cars can come along and visit museums housing all the brands under the VW umbrella Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Skoda, and Seat, as well as VW itself. Two massive glass towers are filled every night with 2,000 VWs of various kinds and during each day as people come to sample 'the VW experience,' with museum and factory tours, they then drive away in their sparkling new car.
There are plans for many other attractions, including a massive indoor skiing facility and, according to Rippholz, the whole idea of the developments is to "integrate the architecture of the stadium into other aspects of urban renewal here."
He says that ultimately there will be a whole 'adventure world' and the combination of all these things will ultimately not only benefit Wolfsburg as a whole, but VfL as well.
"If you want to attract people from all over the world you have to offer them something different, new and innovative.
"On the football front specifically, we are not a team of internationally established stars," Rippholz says, "but we know that you need success on the pitch and modern facilities if you are to be active at the top end of the game.
"You have to set goals and one of our first goals is to qualify for the UEFA Cup proper and for us that means securing either fourth or fifth place in the Bundesliga premier division. The aim then is to qualify for the Champions League.
"But we know that you have to build a team to do this and you cannot do it overnight, so all the work we have been doing here is with these aims in mind. This season has been an important step because we have upped our goals with UEFA Cup qualification in mind.
"We have put in place a co-operative arrangement with the River Plate club in Buenos Aires, whereby we share resources and already this year the club has benefited from the relationship with the signing of 22-year-old Argentinean international Andres D'Allesandro and two other Argentineans, Diego Klimowicz and Pablo Quattrocchi."
Results are the quantifiable proof of effort however, and in September, Wolfsburg, under the managership of former Nottingham Forest player Jurgen Rober, beat the giants of the Bundesliga Bayern Munich for the first ever time in a competitive fixture. Brazilian Fernando Baiano scored a brace and Klimowicz got the third in what was a landmark 3-2 win.
"Yes, yes, YES," recalls Rippholz in almost orgasmic pleasure. "You know people in Germany looked at us for many years as what might be called a poor neighbour. So for us to beat Bayern last month was absolutely huge.
"Our stadium has helped us to achieve that. The big clubs are now looking at VfL in a different light. You might even say they are jealous of us."
They aren't the only ones.
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