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Farewell to the Bundesliga?
Schalkes mascot Erwin after the 0: 4 in the derby against Dortmund
Photo:
Lars Baron / Getty Images
Whenever things go badly at Schalke, BVB fans dig out issue 94 of "Kicker" from 2017.
The former Schalke boss Clemens Tönnies adorns the cover of the football magazine together with a quote from him: "We want to overtake Dortmund in the long run."
After the 0: 4 in the derby against Dortmund on Saturday, that statement doesn't seem like it was four years old, but rather a hundred years.
Schalke are not only far from overtaking BVB, the club will in all likelihood soon even play in a lower league.
The 0: 4 was the tenth game this season that Schalke lost with three goals or more.
The descent is getting closer.
Or is there still something going on?
With twelve outstanding games, is there still a minimal chance of staying up?
The answer has to be: no.
And that's why.
Lack of fitness
David Wagner was the coach of S04 until the second day of the season.
On Sunday morning he was a guest in the »double pass«.
His analysis of the Schalke crisis was mainly limited to one factor: injuries.
Indeed: In Gelsenkirchen professionals injure themselves more often than elsewhere.
According to the page Fußballverletzungen.com, Schalke players missed match and training days in the previous 1955 season.
Only Werder Bremen came up with a weaker value.
In the derby at the weekend, Skhodran Mustafi and Nabil Bentaleb were injured before the kick-off, goalkeeper Ralf Fährmann had to be replaced early.
But injuries are not always coincidental, especially not when they occur frequently.
These can occur due to excessive or incorrect loads.
The fact that Schalke's players show deficits in the physical area is also indicated by the weak running values: When it comes to the number of sprints, Schalke occupies thirteenth place in the league, and when it comes to the number of kilometers run they are by far the last.
If a team wants to free itself from a seemingly hopeless situation, it has to be at least one thing: fit.
It's not Schalke.
A squad without a suitable game idea
Wagner provided a second reason for the crisis in the »double pass«: The club had promised him to invest money in new players.
But that did not happen.
The fact that Schalke's squad is not suitable for the first division has largely prevailed as a thesis in football Germany.
It is said that the players provide illustrative material week after week.
But is that true?
Is the Schalke team that inferior?
Not really.
Many players have proven their class in the past.
Suat Serdar played for the national team last September.
Mark Uth was involved in eleven goals in the second half of last season - but not for Schalke, but for 1. FC Köln, to which he was loaned.
Amine Harit not only dribbled out a number of opponents in the 2017/2018 runner-up season.
This season he shone with the only Schalke win of the season, the 4-0 in Hoffenheim (three assists, one goal).
If you take the individual parts of this Schalke team and add them up, it doesn't necessarily result in a relegated team.
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Schalke player Amine Harit (r.) During the game against Dortmund: Who should he find with his allusions?
Photo: Martin Meissner / dpa
But a soccer team is more than the sum of its parts.
And this is where the much bigger Schalke problem shows up: There is no common idea that holds this team together.
Worse still: In this team there are players who feel most comfortable in very different systems and game ideas.
There's Serdar and Benito Raman who would be perfect for high press and tempo football.
But there are also Benjamin Stamboli and Omar Mascarell who slow down the game.
They represent the opposite of speed football.
Schalke has always been suitable for the Bundesliga when it defends well as under coach Domenico Tedesco and in the first half of the season by Wagner.
But S04 can't even do that: 56 goals conceded is the worst value in the league.
In addition, the offensive was never developed further.
This can be illustrated well with Harit: The Tunisian is tricky, strong in one-on-one and creative.
But there are hardly any players in the Schalke squad who can use his face-offs - except for the 19-year-old Matthew Hoppe.
Teams like Frankfurt or Wolfsburg have learned to break deep opposing defensive lines.
Not Schalke.
The counterexample Mainz
In fact, at the start of the second half of the season, FC Schalke hardly had any chance of staying up.
They got seven points in the first half of the season.
No Bundesliga club ever made it to the league after such a bad streak.
The example of Mainz 05 shows that you can still make better decisions in this almost hopeless situation.
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Schalke's coach Christian Gross
Photo: LEON KUEGELER / AFP
The Mainz team also only got seven points in the first half of the season.
But Mainz exchanged the entire staff.
Ex-manager Christian Heidel returned, as did ex-coach Martin Schmidt, and as coach they signed ex-player Bo Svensson.
These weren't nostalgic commitments.
Mainz returned to a long-standing successful philosophy as a training association for coaches and players, which annoys the big players in the industry with high pressing and cheeky football.
With success: after the 2-1 win against Borussia Mönchengladbach, the club is only one point away from a non-relegation rank.
Under Svensson, the team scored eleven points in eight games.
At the same time, Schalke signed Christian Gross as coach and with Mustafi and Jan-Klaas Huntelaar players with formerly big names.
Neither of them have been able to help the team (one for performance reasons, the other due to an injury).
The club has not returned to a successful philosophy.
The question is also what it should be.
Icon: The mirror