Deniz Undav’s nose for goal is making Stuttgart forget all about Woltemade | Andy Brassell

This had felt like one of those weeks not in which momentum was shifting, but in which it had already shifted. It was ultimately a positive one for Germany; they had entered Monday’s reception of Slovakia, who had beaten them in the teams’ first game in Bratislava, with need of a point and not without some trepidation. Those worries were emphatically scrubbed out in Leipzig, 6-0. It was night and day next to the laboured win in Luxembourg three days before, but those contrasting displays had one thing in common. They were marshalled by the goals and the sang-froid of Nick Woltemade.
That the towering striker was Stuttgart’s for a season feels almost a dream already; a super, surprise single season of future fable to be filed alongside Didier Drogba’s solo campaign at Marseille as he power-walked the path to global domination. Yet if any team in Germany are equipped to deal with sudden, painful personnel losses it is Sebastian Hoeness-era Stuttgart.

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This is the coach who saved the club from relegation in 2023 only to have key men such as Konstantinos Mavropanos and Wataru Endo sold – he responded by guiding his team into runners-up spot in the Bundesliga and the DfB Pokal quarter-finals. On reaching the Champions League, Borussia Dortmund relieved them of their two headliners, Serhou Guirassy and Waldemar Anton. Stuttgart responded with some strong Champions League displays, despite missing out on the knockouts, and winning the Pokal. Dealing with Woltemade’s exit should be a piece of cake.
The thing with surmounting this is that they always knew the answer was within, and this weekend was a timely reminder of how true that was. “Not many manage to score three in Dortmund in one half,” said Hoeness. “That’s something special. Deniz deserves special praise today. He was outstanding.” Yes, Deniz Undav is the answer, as he always has been really. Here, he brought Stuttgart back from 2-0 down and then an even later 3-2 deficit to snatch a point to take back down south.
Hoeness and his team always seek to dominate possession. This has been a key part of their recent revival and what makes them so special, a relegation candidate turned challenger that has made that journey through much more than belt-and-braces football. Yet while they had the edge on paper here (with 55% of the ball and by shading the shot count) they were given the runaround by Dortmund in the first half in particular, and could have been more than 2-0 down. To get something from this game they were going to need somebody to turn half-chances into whole ones, and that is what Undav was born to do.
It’s what he did less than two minutes into the second half, hooking a loose ball over his shoulder into the net to finally give Stuttgart a foothold in the match. It was typical Undav, a goalscorer’s goal, showing his nose, instinct and invention. The equaliser was a little more orthodox, lurching to pounce on another uncleared set piece in the six-yard box. And once Karim Adeyemi – emerging from his week of purgatory, having shown public contrition for the ‘mystery box’ scandal in which he claimed he inadvertently ordered illegal weapons – had seemingly written the headline by slotting Dortmund back in front in the 90th minute, it was Undav who had the last word, expertly turning Nico Schlotterbeck and steering a precise finish into the corner of Gregor Kobel’s goal. This is him, the fox in the box who makes every finish art.
Undav, wearing the captain’s armband, had led from the front, as he has so often of late. This took his current run to six goals in his last three games and got Stuttgart a point that, even at this relatively early stage of the season, feels like a vital one, keeping them level on points with Dortmund with the two teams occupying fourth and fifth place. Expectations for the two clubs may be very different but everything suggests that they are likely to be rivals for Champions League places to the final few paces of the season.
For Undav himself there is an even greater motivation. Woltemade was initially signed from Werder Bremen as backup or a complement to Undav, and that is something that the latter would like to repeat at international level, however unlikely that might seem after the last week in particular. After his sensational 18-goal, nine-assist debut Bundesliga season Undav went into Euro 2024 hoping to be Julian Nagelsmann’s starting striker. It didn’t quite work out between the contributions of Kai Havertz and Niclas Füllkrug and now he is on the outside looking in, not selected for the squad since the Nations League games in the summer. At the age of 29, it feels like the moment for Undav has to be now, and perhaps he feels that too.

Augsburg 1-0 Hamburg, Bayern Munich 6-2 Freiburg, Borussia Dortmund 3-3 Stuttgart, Heidenheim 0-3 Borussia Mönchengladbach, Köln 3-4 Eintracht Frankfurt, Mainz 1-1 Hoffenheim, RB Leipzig 2-0 Werder Bremen, St Pauli 0-1 Union Berlin, Wolfsburg 1-3 Bayer Leverkusen

Stuttgart need him this season – and certainly in this first half of the campaign – more than ever. They were at least partly blindsided by the loss of Woltemade, whose keenness to leave was evident all summer but who looked likely to stay put due to Stuttgart’s high valuation until Newcastle blew them away with their mega offer. When a deal for Genk’s Oh Hyeon-Gyu fell through the responsibility fell squarely on to Undav’s shoulders, and the call to fill that gap didn’t start well. Fourteen minutes into the post-Woltemade era, he tore the medial ligament in his knee against Borussia Mönchengladbach, and it was almost two months until he was able to start another match.
Now Undav looks as ready as he can be, and that’s all he can do because, injuries notwithstanding, the best he can hope for is to be Woltemade’s understudy at the World Cup. But just as the former Stuttgart striker cuts a unique profile so does the current one, in a very different way, as Germany’s most natural goalscorer. If he spends the next six months making his club’s dreams come true, he might do the same for his personal ones.
Talking points
• Having been flattened twice by Undav, Dortmund chins were understandably on the floor, with their limitations underlined. Also highlighted this weekend was a climate of restlessness and division, with the outgoing chief executive, Hans-Joachim Watzke, confirmed as club president at Sunday’s AGM – but with only 59% of the vote despite being the only candidate.
• Bayern Munich found themselves in the extraordinary position of being two down at home to Freiburg after 17 minutes, twice suckered at set pieces, but roared back to win 6-2, mainly inspired by Michael Olise, who scored twice and laid on another three. They now travel to Arsenal for a mouthwatering Champions League fixture, while Bayer Leverkusen went third with a 3-1 win at Wolfsburg which underlined both their attacking potential and their defensive malleability which could cause them big issues away at Manchester City on Tuesday.
• If Undav isn’t the Bundesliga striker of the moment outside Harry Kane then it’s Haris Tabakovic, fresh from almost taking Bosnia and Herzegovina straight to the World Cup and now with seven goals and two assists in six games for club and country after his scoring once in Mönchengladbach’s 3-0 victory at dead-last Heidenheim. A month ago Gladbach were winless since March and bottom. Three straight Bundesliga wins later and they sit 11th.

Pos
Team
P
GD
Pts

1
Bayern Munich
11
33
31

2
RB Leipzig
11
9
25

3
Bayer Leverkusen
11
12
23

4
Borussia Dortmund
11
9
22

5
Stuttgart
11
5
22

6
Eintracht Frankfurt
11
5
20

7
Hoffenheim
11
5
20

8
Union Berlin
11
-3
15

9
Werder Bremen
11
-5
15

10
Cologne
11
1
14

11
Freiburg
11
-5
13

12
Borussia M'gladbach
11
-3
12

13
Augsburg
11
-9
10

14
Hamburg
11
-8
9

15
Wolfsburg
11
-8
8

16
St Pauli
11
-12
7

17
Mainz
11
-8
6

18
Heidenheim
11
-18
5