VfB Stuttgart's season turned a significant corner with a 4-2 victory at Bayer Leverkusen, a result that shifts the mood around a club that had been sliding toward a crisis. The win, confirmed by the latest structured data, moves Stuttgart to 11th in the Bundesliga table with nine points from eight games, offering genuine relief after a turbulent run that had seen them drop as low as 15th.

The backdrop to that Leverkusen result matters. Stuttgart had lost 2-3 at home to a previously pointless Borussia Mönchengladbach side, a defeat that prompted coach Sebastian Hoeneß to tighten his grip internally, with no starting place considered guaranteed and individual errors addressed openly in front of the squad. A 1-0 DFB-Pokal win at Paderborn steadied the ship before the BayArena performance gave the squad something more substantial to build on.

Captain Deniz Undav remains a storyline in his own right. The striker has yet to score in the Bundesliga this season, and Lothar Matthäus said publicly, as reported by Sky90, that Undav has "lost his smile" and may be weighed down by the captaincy he inherited from Atakan Karazor. Whether the Leverkusen win frees him remains to be seen.

Attention now turns to Istanbul, where Stuttgart face Galatasaray in the Champions League on 3 November at the Rams Global Stadyumu, a fixture that offers another chance to build momentum across two competitions simultaneously.