Fans of the high art of football are unlikely to have marked Friday evening in their calendars.
In the duel between bottom FC Schalke 04 and table penultimate Hertha BSC (8.30 p.m. / DAZN), fans expect tough duels and a heated atmosphere instead.
Hertha veteran Kevin-Prince Boateng even thinks of being sent off. In the showdown, which is extremely important for both teams, a pure relegation battle is on the agenda. Whoever loses is not gone yet, but goes into the final spurt of the season with the worst prospects. The coaches know that too.
points before beauty
“It remains to be seen whether it will always be good in terms of football,” said Schalke coach Thomas Reis meaningfully and added: “What is important is a successful game.” The 49-year-old likes games like this and they actually suit his technically limited but passionate team. The weak performance of Schalke last weekend in the 0: 2 at relegation competitor Hoffenheim was all the more incomprehensible for Reis – the second defeat in a row.
When preparing for the game against Hertha, he deliberately relied on self-cleansing forces in the team. After the video analysis, the coach deliberately left the team alone for a while. “It’s about finding solutions together and maybe throwing something at each other’s heads,” he explained the measure.
Eight Bundesliga games without a defeat at the beginning of the second half of the season had brought back the hope of staying up in the league for the Gelsenkirchen team, who had already been beaten in the meantime. If Schalke now also loses against Hertha, the mood could change again.
Rice: No final
Reis does not want to speak of a “final”. But he also knows that going into the final sprint of the season as bottom of the table with a further gap to the saving ranks would make the mission to stay in the league almost impossible. Schalke has a difficult remaining program and still plays for the top teams FC Bayern Munich, RB Leipzig and SC Freiburg.
Both the Royal Blues and Hertha would jump to the relegation place for at least one night with a win. An “additional motivation”, as Reis emphasized. With his Berlin colleague Sandro Schwarz, the coach does not only have the opportunity to climb the table.
Despite the precarious situation of their clubs, both can work relatively quietly and currently have a kind of job guarantee. Schalke wants Reis, who fits in well with the Ruhr area club with his labor mentality, to continue down a league in the event of relegation. Despite the last five games without a win in the capital, Schwarz’ position is currently not up for discussion.
Like Reis, the 44-year-old expects a fighting game – albeit in a more moderate way than his leader on the pitch. Black didn’t quite go along with Boateng’s statements, in whose opinion a red card in the relegation battle should sometimes be accepted.
“I know what Prince meant,” said the coach. Boateng had said before the game at his ex-club: “We’re in a relegation battle, we’re not here to play well or to take our foot away. If that’s close to the red card, then so be it. We’re here, to fight.”
Reis took the announcement with humor. “If Berlin gets a red card, I would of course much prefer that to us,” said the Schalke coach and smiled. But: “Of course we also want to play hard.” For fans of football art, the quarter-finals of the Champions League were there this week.
