Friday 23 July 2021
Much (in) certainty in league two
Schalke just doesn’t want to end up like HSV
By Alexander Schultze
FC Schalke 04 starts the second division season with a bang against the Hamburg sports club. Despite the dramatic decline, the Gelsenkircheners spend a calm, focused preparation. Whether the team will play directly for promotion is open. The HSV game will be a first hint.
The news on Monday came at the wrong time: “Schalke players tested positive for Covid-19”. However, the routines that have now also manifested themselves in professional football took hold: training canceled, players isolated, the game on Friday against the Hamburg sports club was not endangered, it said. But Schalke wouldn’t be Schalke if there wasn’t a certain dramatic potential in the routine. The next day it was revealed who the player was: goalkeeper Ralf Fährmann.
The ferryman who was able to prevail in the preparation as number one in the box, who is a member of the team council and who, in a squad that got a completely different face, is one of the few remaining identifying figures. Now the preparation, which had been calm so far, got an unwanted dynamic shortly before its end. Since the second goalkeeper Markus Schubert was recently given up, S04 is now missing two goalkeepers. They wanted to get a third man to replace Schubert anyway, but he would have been more of a young perspective player, possibly from the in-house miners’ forge. So now everything is different: On Wednesday the 28-year-old Austrian Martin Fraisl was signed from the Netherlands.
The game against the once “insurmountable” from the Hanseatic city on Friday (8.30 p.m. / Sat.1, Sky and in the live ticker at ntv.de.) is the start of the second division season. For the Gelsenkirchen team it is the return to the lower house after 30 years of membership in the first division. The people of Hamburg seem to have settled there by now. Although they were always considered the top favorite for promotion, they missed the relegation three times in fourth place and are now in their fourth season in the second division. A warning sign for Schalke 04, which immediately pushes up again.
Some fans were hoping for a “cleansing thunderstorm”
The relegation, however, was the logical consequence of a decline that football Germany had to picture for itself over a year and a half and which has probably never been seen at this speed and in this drama. In the end, Schalke was so weak that many fans of other teams even saved jokes because Royal Blue was helpless on the ground. The followers themselves spoke of complete emptiness and were shocked by the indifference they showed towards the descent. However, there were not a few hopes of a kind of “cleansing thunderstorm” that shakes structures, sharpens the view that demands one or the other personal “sacrifice” in the team or the club bodies. Better to end with horror …
And indeed there have been changes. Coach Dimitrios Grammozis had already taken over the team towards the end of the preseason, but was initially unable to give it much new impetus. Some gazettes were already thinking out loud about coach number six within a good year. Grammozis stayed and is now starting the same mission, resurgence, on Friday. Sports director Rouven Schröder is also new, and already written off by some before he started working. Many fans associated him with his work at Mainz 05, with the wrong squad composition and unfortunate choice of coach. So with things that Schalke are all too familiar with in the recent past.
Peter Knäbel is not new, but after Jochen Schneider’s resignation in the spring, at least initially the strong man in the club. He had to hold talks and make plans at a time when Schalke had not yet relegated mathematically. It is all the more remarkable how carefully, calmly and purposefully he proceeded. In addition to coach and sports director, he was able to sign Gerald Asamoah, Mike Büskens, Youri Mulder, Mathias Schober and Norbert Elgert Schalker for the new start, all of whom stand for honesty and straightforwardness.
The squad was way too expensive for league two
The second big change concerns the squad. The budget had to decrease, from around 80 million euros to 30, some even say 22 million euros. So Schröder had to sort out: who is too expensive, who brings the club a transfer fee? He tried his best, with success. Almost 33 million euros in transfer fees have been achieved so far, although the 20 million for Weston McKennie will be paid off by Juventus Turin over three years. With Ozan Kabak and Amine Harit, the club still has two promising players who could bring in a decent amount.
In addition, it was clear that Schröder would hardly have any money for new signings. With Victor Palsson and Marcin Kaminski he quickly brought in two established defensive forces, and with Thomas Ouwejan he loaned a young left-back. The Austrian Reinhold Ranftl came on for the right side and the Schalke veteran Danny Latza. On the offensive, he was able to sign Simon Terodde, the best second division striker in the recent past, it is only an extract from the renovation, which includes almost the entire squad. With Dominick Drexler, an axis should now be completed – Palsson, Latza, Drexler, Terodde – which actually also includes the now absent Ralf Fährmann and should shape the Schalke game.
In quite convincing test matches it was also noticeable that Grammozis, unlike in the previous season, primarily relies on experienced workers. In the runaway victories against lower-class teams from Wesel-Lackhausen (8: 0) and Hamborn (14: 0), the respectable successes against the Champions League permanent guests Zenit St. Petersburg and Schachtar Donetsk (both 0: 0) and in the 3: 2 -Win against Vitesse Arnhem only Ouwejan (24 years) and Mikhailov (18) as well as the talents Thiaw (19), Florian Flick (21) and Timo Becker (24) regularly participated, the other young players rather complemented the squad.
Experience beats youth
During the realignment, the Schalke Knappenschmiede was mentioned in an almost mantra-like manner and the hope attached to it to develop more of its own players who could make the leap into the first team in the future. No Schalke fan had assumed that eight or nine youth players would regularly be in the starting line-up, but it is noticeable that the youngsters have fallen a little behind for the time being. The team council is also the concentrated experience – because next to the ferryman and captain Latza there are Terodde and Palsson, the only player under 30 on this committee is Thiaw.
In the end, however, it is not primarily who Grammozis will use, but whether the resurgence project can be seriously pursued despite the massive upheaval and all the financial imponderables. The almost trouble-free preparation for Schalke conditions at least gives hope. The first chance to set an example is on Friday evening in the second division opening game against Hamburger SV. What was a Bundesliga cracker for many years is now a duel between the club – Schalke – for which the other – HSV – serves as a cautionary example in view of its failure at the so important recovery.
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