EIn fact, calm should finally return to FC Schalke 04 in the middle of this week. The plan was to successfully complete the search for a coach after Frank Kramer separated, and the board worked on creating an acceptable financial framework for the urgently needed winter transfers.
This Wednesday, the usual group of Schalke reporters were waiting on the club premises for the arrival of the new head coach, but in his place a completely different message arrived: completely surprisingly, sports director Rouven Schröder had resigned “for personal reasons”, the club announced in the afternoon . Suddenly nobody was talking about a new coach, there was puzzling and speculation. The bottom of the table from Gelsenkirchen has once again outdone itself in its role as the most experienced chaos club in the Bundesliga. Whereby many backgrounds of the resignation are initially in the dark.
Schröder had been heavily criticized in recent weeks, and there was hardly a report about Schalke that did not mention that the squad put together by the 47-year-old from Sauerland was actually not suitable for the Bundesliga. The trainer chosen by Schröder, Frank Kramer, was unable to develop anything from it, and the search for a successor seems more difficult than expected. The “architect of the promotion team”, as Schröder was called in the club’s announcement on the separation, has recently acted much less happily than around the previous season. Both on the transfer market and in his choice of coach.
Schröder as a figure of hope
Now the original plan was to present a new head coach in the second half of last week. Apparently, Schröder and sports director Peter Knäbel tried to lure Bruno Labbadia to Schalke, but he declined, although he had been waiting for a new chance for two and a half years. Then all sorts of rumors circulated and some prankster told Peter Neururer on behalf of Schröder that he should take over the team. In the end it all came down to Thomas Reis, whom Schröder had already had in mind before the season instead of Kramer. That, too, had become public and was a burden for Kramer from the start. The stress was enormous.
Now the transfer market hero of the past year is gone and the board is shocked. Because Schröder had been perceived by many Schalke players as the new face of the club. His emotionally colored language, his optimism, his lifeblood and his down-to-earth attitude made him a figure of hope for a better future. “We would have liked to have continued on the path with Rouven,” said Knäbel, praising the merits of the former employee: Schröder’s achievements could “perhaps only be fully measured and appreciated by the public in a few years’ time,” explained the sports director and announced: “Without them Work by Rouven Schröder would no longer exist at FC Schalke 04 in its usual form.”
Schalke agreed with Reis
After all, Schröder completed the process of looking for a coach before he left, at least the part that falls into the sports department. According to information from the FAZ, the club is in agreement with Thomas Reis, the former Bochum head coach should look after the team on Sunday (5:30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on DAZN) in the game against SC Freiburg. On Wednesday evening, the only thing missing was the release of Bochum, where Reis is actually still under contract until the summer of 2023. The arrival of Reis will hardly ease the pain of Schröder’s loss.
Recently, the sporting director may have made a few mistakes on the transfer market, but his room for maneuver was massively restricted due to economic constraints. It is now speculated that he has lost faith in strengthening the team with the scarce resources needed to stay in the class. Schröder himself was silent about his reasons and only thanked “for the trust and the time together”.
Nevertheless, there are a few parallels to Max Eberl’s moving resignation at Borussia Mönchengladbach in January. It is to be wished that Schröder wasn’t as exhausted and desperate as Eberl was at the time, but both sports directors have been massively and persistently criticized after unsuccessful summer transfers and unfortunate coaching decisions. So much responsibility for a club, whose sporting performance affects the feelings of thousands of people, can also become a heavy burden in the event of failure. For the time being, Knäbel will take over the duties of sports director, who now has to find the right reinforcements for the team and a successor for Schröder after a trainer.
