Nick Woltemade Scout Report At VfB Stuttgart 2024/2025: Football’s Answer To Victor Wembanyama – Player Analysis

During the 2019/20 season, Werder Bremen found themselves in deep trouble in the Bundesliga.

After a rough start to the campaign, the team struggled with numerous injuries and, consequently, struggled to achieve results.

They ended up in the relegation battle and did not have a lot of players healthy enough to train.

Then, coach Florian Kohfeldt needed to bring youth players from the academy into training.

He decided to bring up a German youth international, Nick Woltemade, to fill out his practice squad.

Woltemade, born in Bremen, has been in Werder’s academy since he was eight years old.

He impressed the coach and got his first Bundesliga start in February 2020 against Augsburg, making him the youngest player to play for Werder Bremen at that point in their rich history.

However, the young attacker struggled with injuries and getting playing time at Werder for the coming years, which is why the club decided to loan him to 3. Liga to SV Elversberg.

Woltemade’s ascent began in Elversberg.

With 27 goal contributions in 35 games, Woltemade was one of the main reasons for Elversberg’s promotion at the end of the season.

After returning to his boyhood club, Woltemade was still not happy with the playing time and trust Ole Werner gave him.

In the summer of 2024, his contract expired, and he left his home to sign with VfB Stuttgart.

The 1.98m tall Woltemades start was bad, however.

He was left out of the UEFA Champions League squad and struggled to secure playing time again, but since November, he has been a starter for Stuttgart, currently boasting 11 goals and three assists in 23 games for the Swabians.

In this scouting report and player analysis, we will examine what makes Woltemade so special, identify his strengths and weaknesses, and outline areas where he needs to improve to become a senior international for Germany.

Who Is Nick Woltemade?

Watching Nick Woltemade play is a sight to behold.

Watching VfB Stuttgart games is worthwhile anyway, but the U21 international for Germany definitely sticks out immediately, simply because of his size.

Woltemade stands at 1.98m and 90kg, and with his slender build and incredibly long legs, he sometimes seems even taller than that.

Funnily enough, when Woltemade was starting out his career at Werder Bremen, he was primarily used as a substitute for the last couple of minutes of the games, and the German TV commentators and pundits always talked about him as this big target man with great aerial ability just because of his size.

In reality, this could not be further from the truth.

While Woltemade is a tall human being, his aerial ability was one of his biggest weaknesses for most of his career, and finishing was something he nearly never managed to reach a Bundesliga level until this season; it took him 49 games to score his first goal for Werder at the senior level.

But why did VfB Stuttgart decide to sign Woltemade after finishing as the runner-up in the Bundesliga last season?

Because Woltemade is amazing at pretty much everything else you’d want in an attacker.

Woltemade moves incredibly well for his size.

He is quick and has great timing in his runs behind the defensive line.

Another thing that sticks out is his dribbling ability; the ball seems to be glued to his feet, and ever since he was 17 years old, he has glided through opposing defences like it was the easiest thing ever.

His vision is also elite for a striker.

His feel for space allows him to receive the ball in favourable positions at all times, and from there, his link-up play and orientation are just so great that he always finds solutions with his passing game.

While he struggled in the air frequently and his tension was not always present, Woltemade made massive improvements over the course of the last 12 months, becoming a starter at Werder and for Sebastian Hoeneß at VfB Stuttgart.

Now, he is even at least decent in the air and uses his body way better for hold-up play and shielding the ball compared to his early days.

This makes Woltemade a very interesting player, a tweener between a striker and an attacking midfielder, to be exact.

In some situations, he plays like a striker, providing presence and physicality in the box, while in other situations, he drops back into midfield and transitions attacks on his own from the box to the box.

Here, we can see a typical situation for Woltemade in the last couple of weeks.

VfB is building up and being pressed by a high line from Holstein Kiel.

Woltemade realises that instead of staying in his striker position, he drops back between the lines, right in the sweet spot behind the pressing midfielder and in the gap between the midfielder and the wing-back.

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