After the dismantling at 1. FC Magdeburg, coach Karel Geraerts’ chair at Schalke is shaking a lot. But even if the Belgian stays in the 2nd Bundesliga for a few more games, it’s not just the coach of the Royal Blues who will have to leave by the end of the season.
“This has nothing to do with second division football.” The verdict of the former Bundesliga professional and avowed FC Schalke 04 fan, Maik Franz, at halftime of the Royal Blues’ game against 1. FC Magdeburg last Saturday was harsh – but also completely justified. At this point, the first division relegated team was already 3-0 behind against a fellow competitor for staying in the league after 45 terrible minutes. And it could easily have been higher, if not even should have been. 1. FC Magdeburg did whatever it wanted with Schalke. And the Royal Blues team seemed completely helpless and leaderless at times.
Paul Seguin, who came to Gelsenkirchen from Union Berlin before the season, had to stand in front of the TV cameras after the game on behalf of his team – and although he was actually speechless (“I’m just at a loss for words”), he said a whole thing afterwards Menge: “I’m really fed up. It’s a constant up and down. I’m just sorry about the shit we’re playing week after week. I’m really depressed.” And then he said something else that would make headlines across the country: “I hope it’s a good week. We’ve got pressure on us, we have to put our eggs on the table.”
All of this doesn’t sound good, because it sounds like a mixture of a swan song and slogans for perseverance. And his other sentences don’t make things any better: “We have to express our opinions sometimes, be unpleasant – even if it’s my friend. I have to snap at him sometimes, that’s just part of it. We can’t sugarcoat everything and push away responsibility.” Paul Seguin actually didn’t do that when he said: “We players are to blame, no one else.” But obviously not only the outside experts now see things differently – but also large parts of the team. And so it is not surprising that coach Karel Geraerts is already being counted publicly (“Did the S04 coach lose the dressing room?”, “RevierSport”).
Coach blames players
What should alarm the Schalke officials, however, is that there are similar voices to those back in the fall, when the pigeons cooed from the roofs around the Schalke market that coach Thomas Reis no longer had the team behind him. Back then, too, their own players sometimes criticized their own coach’s tactics more openly, sometimes less openly. And in fact, Geraerts has already gambled away with his tactical route in Magdeburg again and again. Geraerts changed his direction at half-time, but when asked afterwards he said that things should have worked better with his original 3-5-2 system. A clear apportionment of blame to his professionals: “The players know each other, the back five is not new to them, they are actually experienced enough. It has to be better.”
Seguin had said that “we are all in the same boat,” but there has been no sign of that at FC Schalke 04 for a long time. And you can only agree with Maik Franz when he says: “The lead over the relegation places is still not big. If you know the second division, then you know how treacherous it is. To be honest, I’m scared “I’m worried about Schalke. Relegation remains an issue.” This is exactly where Schalke’s big problem lies, the longer the season progresses and the fewer games there are to play. Because in the event of relegation, not a single FC Schalke 04 player would have a valid contract for the 3rd league. It is precisely at this point that Paul Seguin’s beautiful “All in One Boat” picture starts to look askew. The player “I AGs” will increasingly want to secure themselves professionally for their own future, the longer the S04 potentially plays a class lower next year.
“Brings out the worst in the players”
Jan Kirchhoff, who played for the Royal Blues for almost a year and a half ten years ago, summed up the situation at Schalke well when he said: “In terms of the quality of the players, this is a good second division team. With “With a very good coach, she could also play for promotion. You can’t develop a structure that gets the best out of the individual players. It seems more like you get the worst out of the players.” What Kirchhoff is indirectly saying is clear. And so there will no longer be any doubts, even in the management team around the new sports director Marc Wilmots, that the (near) future at Schalke will no longer be contested with coach Geraerts.
How long the Belgian will be on the sidelines for the Royal Blues will certainly depend largely on the results next weekend. Should Schalke lose at home against FC St. Pauli (Friday, 6.30 p.m./Sky and in the ntv.de live ticker) and the competition scores points in the relegation battle, it will probably happen very quickly. The only question will then be, who can maintain the class with this team in the short term and form a team in the long term that can finally meet the club’s high expectations of itself again?
But that will probably be an impossibility anyway, as Jan Kirchhoff also said one day: “There is always a latent dissatisfaction at Schalke, that was also the case in my time. It’s never enough around the club.” But now it’s a matter of putting our “eggs on the table,” as Seguin said. It will be interesting to see whether that will ultimately be enough to achieve the minimum goal of staying in the league.