Sports debacle against Kaiserslautern
Now Wilmots is even calling for a relegation battle at Schalke
As of: 12:18 p.m. | Reading time: 4 minutes
After the debacle against 1. FC Kaiserslautern, fear is running rampant at FC Schalke 04. There is a risk of a fall into the third league. Striker Simon Terodde gives vent to his frustration. And sports director Marc Wilmots chooses extremely clear words.
Disaster was followed by humiliation. When the 1:4 (0:1) at 1. FC Kaiserslautern was official, the FC Schalke 04 players went towards the east curve, where the guest fans are standing on the Betzenberg. They stopped at the 16 meter space marker.
It would have made little sense to continue – because from the 8,000 fans who traveled to the Palatinate there was nothing but wild insults and catcalls to be heard. “We’re fed up!” they shouted.
“It’s difficult to find the right words. We had high hopes, but we weren’t there in the duels. Everyone needs to look in the mirror now and question themselves. We don’t have to dream that we’ll climb a few places, but rather work our asses off against Braunschweig,” offensive player Kenan Karaman told Sky.
Schalke’s sports director Marc Wilmots is stunned after the defeat against Kaiserslautern
Source: dpa/Tim Rehbein
Next Saturday, coach Karel Geraerts’ team will welcome Lower Saxony. Should there be a third defeat in a row – Schalke, currently fifteenth in the table, could slip further.
also read
Advertorial property valuation
The fear that the Bundesliga relegated team might be pushed through to the third division has increased since Friday evening. She’s getting on your nerves. Not only the performance in Kaiserslautern, which at times resembled a demonstration, but also the reactions on the sidelines and after the final whistle show how great Schalke’s frustration is.
Simon Terodde takes up advertising boards
After being substituted, Simon Terodde hit an advertising board out of anger, and the striker apparently hadn’t calmed down even when he went into the dressing room. A steward felt compelled to intervene.
The team’s non-performance leaves you perplexed. “We have forgotten the ABCs of football. We learned a lesson from the people of Kaiserslautern. If you don’t show the ultimate passion, it will be difficult to win,” said Geraerts after a game in which Schalke fell behind in the tenth minute through Ragnar Ache and hardly managed anything in the entire first half: a poorly thought-out attack, few shots on goal.
also read
The equalizer (51st) by substitute Winter reinforcement Darko Churlinov – the North Macedonian is on loan until the end of the season – did not bring any structure into the game. On the contrary: as the time went on, more and more errors accumulated.
While last week’s 2-0 defeat against Hamburger SV could be put into perspective with the quality of the opponent and their own bad luck with shots (three goals), Geraerts and the new sports director Marc Wilmots were left blank this time. “It was reasonable against Hamburg, but today seven or eight players were simply not at their level,” said Wilmots.
Marc Wilmots suspects the players have a head problem
But how is this possible when everyone agreed that they had prepared well for the second half of the season? Intensive work was done on the defensive problems in the training camp in Portugal.
This and the seven points from the three games before the winter break should give us courage to get out of the bottom of the table as quickly as possible, it was said. Secretly, considerations were even made as to whether it might still be possible to catch up towards promotion places. The opposite is the case.
also read
“Maybe it’s a head problem, anxiety,” Wilmots said. It would be his job to take the pressure off the players and help Geraerts stabilize the team. But now Wilmots declared a relegation battle. “Now it’s a difficult time for Schalke 04. There are still a lot of games left, but we are in the middle of a relegation battle,” he admitted.
Although this seems realistic, it is also frightening. Because Wilmots justified this not only with the weak performance in Kaiserslautern, but indirectly with a lack of quality. “It’s obviously easy for me to say that I didn’t build the squad. But we have to have faith and forget everything else. We have little money, we have little opportunity, so we have to do it with this squad, and that’s what we’re going to do,” explained the 54-year-old, who has only been in the job since the beginning of the year.
Here you will find content from third parties
In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is necessary, as the providers of the embedded content require this consent as third party providers [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (revocable at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can revoke your consent at any time using the switch and privacy at the bottom of the page.
