Stuttgart facing the storm of departures: When the €163M wage bill collides with the law of depreciation

STUTTGART – Tuesday morning training at VfB Stuttgart's facility was unusually quiet. I stood by the technical fence, where I have stood hundreds of times since the 2026 season, and watched Atakan Karazor train with the captain's armband stripped from his arm. Nobody spoke about it loudly. But everyone knew. The 29-year-old midfielder has not only lost the armband; he has lost his starting place from the very beginning of the season. In the stands, a group of supporters still sang his name – loyal fans who do not know that the club itself has been preparing for his departure for a long time. When I returned to Stuttgart in August, I sensed something unusual. Not the atmosphere on the pitch, but the atmosphere in the office corridors. Calls from player agents to sporting director Fabian Wohlgemuth had become denser, shorter, and colder. And when I read the kicker report last week, everything became clear: VfB Stuttgart are standing before a structural crisis that the press calls a 'spectacular wave of departures.' I want to dig deeper than that sensational label, to understand what is really happening. The problem begins with numbers. Three seasons ago, Stuttgart's total personnel costs – including wages and related expenses – stood at €105 million. Last season, that figure reached €163 million. An increase of 55.2 percent. And according to multiple sources, this season will be even higher. But sitting down with the financial documents, I notice a paradox: Stuttgart is not a club with booming revenues. They are a club that sells players to operate – a classic 'stepping stone' model of the Bundesliga. And when the wage bill grows faster than revenue, the law of asset depreciation begins to tighten its grip on each player, one by one. Sporting director Wohlgemuth understands this equation well. In his comments to the press, he spoke about how contract negotiations would be postponed: seven of the eight core players would not see renewed talks before January – Jeff Chabot, Angelo Stiller, Chris Führich, Atakan Karazor, Maximilian Mittelstädt, Josha Vagnoman, and Ermedin Demirovic. The stated reasons: 'performance development' and 'financial planning certainty.' It sounds reasonable. But this is a defensive strategy – keeping optionality, avoiding committing to wage levels before knowing where the team will stand in the season. What caught my attention most lies in the club's own conduct. Stuttgart – a club that just qualified for European competition – is openly saying that renewing all contracts would 'blow the budget.' Listen carefully: not 'difficult,' not 'challenging,' but 'blow up.' This club is managing a hard cost ceiling, not an optimization problem. They are operating in defensive mode. And that is where the law of depreciation comes into play. In football, the biggest asset of a selling club is their resale value. Kicker wrote a notable line: this group of players is at an age where 'their resale value can gradually start to be discussed.' Let me translate the boardroom language: they are saying they intend to sell some of these players. Karazor is 29, Mittelstädt is 29 – entering the depreciation zone. Chabot is 28, Führich is 28, Demirovic is 28 – standing at peak value but with the downward slope already visible. This club must make a choice: renew with rising wages while asset value falls, or sell before it becomes too late. I remember the 2026 season, when I spent nine months at La Masia following a 17-year-old midfielder. That 17-year-old boy didn't need me to believe in him; he needed me to stand still and observe. That patience taught me to read the structure beneath the surface. Now looking at Stuttgart, I see a similar structure at work: they are betting on a window – waiting until January, waiting to see where the team sits in the table, waiting to see if the European qualification position still exists – then deciding whom to keep, whom to sell. This is a calculated gamble, but it turns this autumn into an extended audition for seven core players. The sporting consequences have already begun to appear. After four matches, Stuttgart have only three points. A poor start by any standard of a European-qualification contender. I cannot say whether that reflects bad luck or genuine decline, because I do not yet have process data – xG, PPDA, possession rates. But I know one thing: when contract talks are frozen, when the captain's armband is stripped from a 29-year-old who still has a contract until 2028, the message received in the dressing room is very different from the message the board publicly declares. He is being managed for an exit. And the others whose contracts remain unrenewed can hear that sound too. Seven players deferred. One player fast-tracked into early renewal talks: Ramon Hendriks, 25 years old. Look at this exception and you will understand Stuttgart's philosophy. Hendriks is an asset still in the appreciation phase. He is young, and Borussia Dortmund – a predator just above in the food chain – is watching. Protecting Hendriks with a new contract not only keeps him; it sends a market signal that Stuttgart still has a strategically protected asset zone. At the same time, it exposes the internal hierarchy: the 28–29 cohort is expendable, while the under-25 group is to be protected. Ermedin Demirovic – the 28-year-old Bosnian striker – is the next flashpoint. There is already a 'lucrative offer' from Turkey. I do not know the specific figure, but when a player in the deferred group receives an external offer, there are two possibilities: it may be an agent's tactic to pressure the club, or it may be a real door to relieve the wage bill. In either case, Demirovic is becoming a key variable of the January transfer window. What interests me about this story is how the press frames it. 'Spectacular wave of departures' – that is how Goal.com constructed the headline. But reading the data carefully from kicker – the most authoritative source on German football – you see a different picture: no confirmed departures. Only postponed negotiations. Only one offer from Turkey. Only one player stripped of the captaincy. The 'wave' is a forecast – grounded, but still a forecast. I have witnessed three financial crisis cycles of German clubs since 2026, when I began my career at The Independent. In Moscow I learned that a match can end, but its echoes cannot. And what I have learned from Stuttgart is: a season can end in May, but the consequences of financial decisions echo across multiple seasons. When personnel costs increase 55.2 percent in three years, the club is not just spending more – they are consuming the future asset value of their own squad. Let me say what most commentators are missing: Stuttgart's story is a consequence of wage inflation in the middle tier of the Bundesliga, not just Stuttgart's own story. A club that wants to compete for European places must pay near-top-tier wages to retain near-top-tier players. But when they do, they get trapped in a spiral: the more they pay, the more they must sell to balance; the more they sell, the more they must pay to replace. The selling club never fully harvests the gains from its own development – it only gets transfer fees. And those fees get spent on wages for replacements who may also leave within two years. But I also want to offer a contrarian view: this postponement may be the correct strategy in an uncertain market. If Stuttgart rushed to renew at high wages now, and the team slips to mid-table, they would be trapped with a huge wage bill and no European qualification to offset it. Waiting until January, when the sporting picture is clearer, is an attempt to make better-informed decisions. Every team has people who sing, but only a few have people who listen. Stuttgart is listening – the question is what they will hear in January. I called a friend who works as a scout in the Bundesliga on Thursday. He told me: 'If Stuttgart don't win three of the next five matches, agents will swarm to Mercedesstraße like flies.' He said it with the dry irony of a German, but he is right. Poor autumn form will depress the players' market value at exactly the moment they need to sell. That is the self-reinforcing loop: poor results → player values drop → weaker negotiating position → forced sales → weaker squad → poorer results. This is the most dangerous scenario, and I – with all the prudence of 33 years in the profession – want to say that the press is underestimating this risk. As I left Stuttgart's training ground on Tuesday afternoon, it began to rain. I saw Angelo Stiller walking toward the parking lot, talking to no one. He is 25, one of the most progressive defensive midfielders in the Bundesliga, and he will not know his own future until January. I wonder what he thinks when he puts his keys in the ignition. I do not seek moments; I wait for moments to stand up on their own. And that moment, for Stuttgart, will come in January – when the transfer window opens and seven players sit down at the negotiating table with a club trying to balance keeping them, selling them, and absorbing the cost. One final question I leave for the reader: if you were Fabian Wohlgemuth, what would you say to a 29-year-old player in January when the wage bill has hit the ceiling, your assets are depreciating every month, and the European ticket is hanging in the balance? The answer – whether to keep or sell – will define not just Stuttgart's season, but the club's entire next operating cycle. For a hundred days without spectators, I heard the coach's shout louder than the ball. Now, amid that shout, I am listening to the sound of a club trying to hold itself together – and watching to see whether they know whom to keep, whom to let go, before it is too late. The season is long. Four matches prove nothing. But the financial structure has already said everything: €163 million, seven deferred contracts, one Hendriks exception. I will follow this closely – not as a breaking-news hunter, but as a beat keeper, waiting to see where Stuttgart chooses to stand in the inflation-and-depreciation cycle of German football.