FC Schalke 04 Preview

FC Schalke 04

Coach: Felix Magath.

My favourite coach in Bundesliga. Felix Magath.

In Wolfsburg he had was able to do whatever he wanted, at least almost everything. He changed the whole team and bought players fitting into his system.

After just two years he made Wolfsburg, which was almost relegated the year before Magath came, win the Bundesliga.
Organised defence, fast change from defence to offense and deadly counterattacks were the receipt of their success.

Felix, or better "Quälix" (comes from German word "quälen" which means torture in combination with his name Felix) is very well known for his very hard training, especially pre-season and in winter break. That is also a reason why his teams often need a few weeks to get rip of their tiredness, but at the end of a season it pays off.

In Schalke Felix wont have the possibility to change the whole team and buy new players. But that is probably the motivation for him to show that he can create a good team with given players already.

However, he keeps underlining that the project on Schalke is a middle/long term one. We will see how his work will influence the team and their success.

Money spend for transfers: 4.900.000 €
Money earned from transfers: 4.000.000 €

Balance: -900.000 €

Atmosphere during training camp&test matches:

A lot of players got owned by hard conditional based training of Magath.

The first pictures of Rafinha lying on the ground almost puking made a lot of fans happy though. Of course a good condition is the basis of success and therefore Schalke had many difficult training sessions.

Because of this they didn't look fit in the test matches and also the way they played was similar to last season still. It will definitely take time for them to improve the way Magath wants.

Possible line-ups & tactics:














Most likely: 1. 4-4-2 (4-2-2); LB,CB,CB,RB,DM,DM,ROM,LOM,ST,ST

Aim set by club: Reach top positions "as ten other teams" (Felix Magath).

Team check:

Goalkeeper: 10/10

Here we go with the best goalkeeper together with Benaglio in my opinion.

During the U-21 EM Manuel Neuer showed what potential he has. Good on crosses, very good on line, good on 1vs.1 situations and most important he is always concentrated and is participating in the match.

But what I like most, which I also love when Benaglio does it, is the fact that if he gets a ball he directly hits the turbo does a few steps in front and either throw or shot a long ball to create fast counter attacks. That is so important to be a very good keeper and he does it awesome really.

Backup is Schober who did show last season that he does his best if Neuer misses and he performed better than I expect to be honest.

Defence: 9/10

One of the best defences over years already conceding very low number of goals.

Rafinha is our right back here, small waspish player really. But he knows how to do his job and Bayern München would be happy to have such a right back.

Left back is either Pander, who loves to be long term injured or Kobiashvili who could rarely convince me. If both cannot play all-rounder Westermann can jump in.

Finally the centre backs and finally a change after years. Krsatjic left Schalke and the young but very convincing Höwedes will take over his part. His partner will be Marcelo Bordon and the backup of both is Zambrano or again Westermann.

Don't have to rate this defence myself, the number of goals conceded in last years shows the quality. Only disadvantage could be Pander missing again and Kobiashvili would be the weak part of the defence again.

Midfield: 6/10

Poor Felix Magath who owns such a crap midfield. Jones is injured and will miss a few matches but if he is fit he may play the defensive midfield part together with Westermann.

Right midfield Farfan who played behind the expectations last season and left midfield we could see the young Holtby whom I saw playing here in Aachen a few times. He is a good guy who will improve a lot more with Magath.

I don't know but if Magath will play with the same midfield tactic as in Wolfsburg, we will see probably see Jones as defensive midfield, Farfan as playmaker, Holtby and Westermann on the wings.

Big problem of the midfield is that they lack a good bench. Vasilios, Latza, Stevanovic, Yalin, Kenia are all young guys who played in Schalke II last season. Sanchez, Grossmüller and Streit were all bought with big expectations last year or the year before but all of them are not convincing Magath.

Ivan Rakitic has a similar problem to Sosa in Bayern. When they get the ball we can see that they can play football, but they let miss the rest. Only basic approaches are not enough for Bundesliga. Magath wanted to sell Streit and others but they want to stay since they have good paid contracts which they wont get at other clubs.

Striker: 6/10

If Farfan plays in offensive midfield we have only Halil, Kuranyi and Asamoah as strikers.

I like Halil, he did play so good in Kaiserslautern but when he moved to Schalke he could not repeat the same success which I link more to the team than to him really. During the test matches Halil scored a lot of goals and is a step in front of Kuranyi.

Kuranyi has some problems with the difficult training program of Magath but the only alternative Asamoah is not much better so that he will probably play.

Very sparsely populated on striker position although they can always rotate and let Farfan or Sanchez play as striker. However, compared to the other teams this is really improvable.

Total: 8/10

My prognosis:

I would not love to coach this team if I had not some more money to invest in it.
But that was a typical Magath move, he looks for the challenge and he can not lose a lot.

Everyone knows that Schalke has big problems in midfield and offense and that he has not much money to invest in new players. I wish he could somehow teach those guy how to play real football. At least he owns a few players who were good at some stage in their carrier so that if he can bring them back to their best possible performance he may somehow survive this season between 5-9 position.

If they not had a good defence and a good goalkeeper I would not give them the chance to be under top 10 this season.
The first weeks will be the most difficult ones because media tends to push small disturbances and in past the club let influence itself by such things. Controlling this must be one of a few aims this season.