Thomas Reis didn’t talk around it: “We definitely want to take one of the first two places. My goal is promotion,” said the FC Schalke 04 coach at the last press conference before his team started the second division at Hamburger SV this Friday (8.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the second Bundesliga, on Sat.1 and Sky). Friedhelm Funkel, the greatest promotion expert in German professional football – he managed the feat of getting into the top division six times with five different clubs – confirmed his fellow coaches. In the specialist magazine “Kicker”, the 69-year-old football teacher prophesied: “Schalke will rise.”
The assessment is surprising in its clarity, because Schalke has lost most of its leading players, who, after a catastrophic first half of the season, almost avoided relegation from the Bundesliga in a thrilling second half series. With Marius Bülter went a fast striker who scored eleven of 35 goals last season.
With Rodrigo Zalazar, an excellent footballer who repeatedly created special moments left the team. And with central defender Moritz Jenz and midfielders Alex Kral and Tom Krauß, three more professionals who had provided stability in a central position changed.
The club believe they have found good replacements in midfield with Ron Schallenberg from SC Paderborn, Paul Seguin from 1. FC Union Berlin and Lino Tempelmann from SC Freiburg (previously on loan to 1. FC Nürnberg). This also applies to central defence, in which Leo Greiml will be missing for a long time due to a cruciate ligament rupture, but for whom Timo Baumgartl was signed on Wednesday by PSV Eindhoven (was loaned to Union Berlin).
Even if the squad is filled with many experienced professionals and some very talented players from the club’s own “Knappenschmiede”, the question mark remains as to whether the new one will work as well as the old one as a whole.
Schalke achieved a transfer surplus of around ten million euros in their personnel exchange. This was necessary to ease the financial situation. Because the Gelsenkircheners hadn’t been able to find a shirt sponsor for the coming season for a long time. The chairman of the board, Bernd Schröder, was already counted out by the chairman of the supervisory board, Axel Hefer, during the general meeting in mid-June.
Veltins returns
On Thursday evening, the club then announced on its website that the beer manufacturer Veltins would in future fill the gap on the jersey. Experts estimate the advertising value of the breast at around four million euros. That accounts for about a fifth of the seasonal budget of the traditional club, which is still burdened with around 180 million euros in liabilities.
The royal blue fans, on the other hand, were even happy about the temporarily bare advertising chest. Around 50,000 people came to the “Schalke Day” and frantically bought the jerseys with the inscription “Schalke 04”. Your optimism about a better future is hardly affected by facts anyway.
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In the coming season, they are again pinning their hopes primarily on striker Simon Terodde, who scored 30 goals when he was promoted to the Bundesliga in the 2021/22 season. The fact that Terodde is now 35 years old is not seen as a disadvantage. And the striker is also free of doubts. When asked by the “kicker” whether it was correct to offensively claim promotion as a goal, he replied: “Definitely.”
