There was definitely a certain level of expectation among the home crowd, just before kick-off the people, battered by the heavy evening traffic, hurried towards the stadium so that they didn’t miss a minute of the game, which could perhaps be the beginning of a great story – a story like her once wrote Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead.
When the ball rolled, the blue-lit house was almost full, but the story that Schalke 04 staged against RB Leipzig was not about miraculous rescue, but about doom and doom. It was 4-0 at the break and the house was no longer half full, people fleeing a performance that strained their goodwill. If the fugitives had been told the game would end 6-1, they might have stayed, but they had every reason to fear worse.
Schalke have fallen short on a couple of occasions in what started a euphoric but increasingly dismal season, but the first half of the game against Leipzig was the surprising low point of the now-completed first half of the season. It was surprising because the same team – apart from Simon Terodde, who was rotated to the bench – had made a very competitive impression last Saturday when they lost 3-0 in Frankfurt. This time, however, Leipzig had an alarmingly easy game with a Schalke team that made their coach suffer.
“Then you have no place in the Bundesliga,” says the coach
“If you don’t accept duels and let the opponent run, then you have no place in the Bundesliga,” Thomas Reis later stated with the necessary clarity. Leipzig coach Marco Rose was almost uncomfortable commenting on the game in the presence of his frustrated colleague. He recorded an “excellent first half in every respect” and tried to console the hosts Schalke: “The lads wanted a lot and didn’t get it onto the pitch.”
The first Leipzig counterattack brought the first Leipzig goal (7th minute): Timo Werner and goal scorer André Silva was enough for a little speed increase, Schalke’s remaining defense with Maya Yoshida and Henning Matriciani found no means against it. The 2-0 for RB (15th) gave an impression of the fundamental disorganization of the Schalke defense, it developed from a throw-in and, by means of a simple wing shift, created a situation in which right-back Benjamin Heinrichs was allowed to stand alone in front of Alexander Schwolow’s goal. Immediately before the break, when Schalke had just sent a few minimal signs of life, Silva and Werner ended all doubts about the rest of the evening with the goals to make it 4-0.
In the second half, Schalke, who were now better adjusted, even looked like the home side for a few minutes, the Japanese newcomer Soichiro Kozuki – “one of the few bright spots”, as Reis later emphasized – shot the 1:4. Opportunities for a further improvement in the result followed. But towards the end Schalke ran out of steam. Dani Olmo with a fantastic goal to make it 5-1 and substitute Yussuf Poulsen completed the work.