GThe mood on Sunday evening at FC Schalke 04 was subdued and at the same time fairly disciplined, where the fear of being relegated to the second Bundesliga was becoming more concrete from week to week. The crowd went to great lengths to respond to the 2-0 loss to SC Freiburg with supportive benevolence rather than the feelings of anger and frustration that must have built up in the hearts of the royal blues.
The team got applause for a performance that wasn’t disastrous but just too weak for their opponents. “The fact that the fans are still so behind us is very important for us as a team, it’s unbelievable,” said Thomas Ouwejan, who had to be substituted with an inner ligament injury. “We hope it stays that way.”
A dangerous mixture of different emotional dynamics is emerging again, which reminds some Schalke of the terrible relegation season 2020/2021, when the club lost one game after the next without energy. Schalke usually make an effort, but even under the leadership of Thomas Reis, they didn’t have a chance at first. “In the decisive situations we were second winners,” said the new coach, who seemed a little less confident than on Thursday.
Schalke introduced him as the successor to Frank Kramer. “The path will not be easy, you could see that,” said Reis. And Cedric Brunner explained: “Unfortunately, we keep being too naive and conceding goals at very unfavorable times.” Vincenco Grifo made it 1-0 just before half-time and after an hour a penalty kick made it 2-0 for Freiburg met.
Does this club wear employees down?
The frustration about the fifth defeat in a row is now mixed more and more with all sorts of other subjects: the anger about the obviously wrong choice of coach before the season, the sadness about the vanished high spirits after the promotion in May and the anger about the possibly avoidable loss several heroes of the previous year: Ko Itakura, Darko Churlinow and Malik Thiaw had to go because economic considerations were more important than sporting ones.
All of these separations were well thought out and more or less there was no alternative, say those responsible. But the fact that the popular sports director Rouven Schröder surprisingly resigned last week fuels new doubts about the quality of the board’s work. Does this club wear down passionate employees? Was Schröder offended at being criticized for some of his summer transfers? Was there a dispute in the club management about the willingness to take risks when dealing with the scarce funds? Or did Schröder simply want to leave because he is flirting with the chance of working at a club that is less constrained?
Couldn’t stop the downward trend yet: Thomas Reis
:
Image: dpa
Those responsible deny all of this without being able to explain conclusively how the situation could escalate to such an extent that Schröder didn’t even want to last the few days until the winter break. In any case, this process has dampened the impact of the new momentum that Reis was supposed to bring to the club. “I saw a team that put everything into it,” said the new boss, who refused to explain the defeat by saying he only had two days to work with his new players before the game.
Reis is now in demand as both a professional and a psychologist who needs a working football plan and to find a core of players who believe they are good enough for the big goal of the season: staying in the league. At the moment it is unclear whether such players exist. In any case, Ouwejan’s voice got thinner when he was asked whether FC Schalke was suitable for the Bundesliga. “Yes, I think we are,” said the Dutchman, “we just don’t show it in every game.”
On Saturday, the bottom of the table will play for Werder Bremen, the club that largely kept their team together from the previous season and is doing much better in the Bundesliga.
