David Wagner quickly escaped to the cabin while Uwe Rösler forgot all the corona precautions before relieving them. Fortuna Dusseldorf’s coach happily fell around everyone’s neck after his first home win this year. The 2: 1 (0: 0) against the badly battered FC Schalke 04, on the other hand, increases the concerns of Schalke coach Wagner.
The free fall of the team that has been victorious for ten games now continues unabated. At relegation candidate Düsseldorf, the team of coach David Wagner also lost the third ghost game since the Bundesliga restart on matchday 28.
The destructive defensive tactic of the battered guests after the first away goal this year by Weston McKennie (53rd minute) even seemed to work. But with great struggle and thanks to well-known individual Schalke mistakes, the Fortuna still turned the game. Schalke-Schreck Rouwen Hennings with his first goal under coach Uwe Rösler (64.) and Kenan Karaman (68.) made the first Düsseldorf home win in the back series perfect.
Hennings, who had already scored all three goals in Düsseldorf in the 3-3 first leg at Schalke, was back in the starting line-up for Fortuna for the first time since the end of February. After the last four draws, some of which were very unfortunate, the Düsseldorf team increased their lead over Werder Bremen to 17th (22nd) with 27 points.
Schalke’s horror record: 3:24 goals in ten games
For the royal blue shaken by injury concerns, the international places are moving further and further away. After the 0: 4 in Dortmund, the 0: 3 on Sunday against Augsburg and the bankruptcy in Düsseldorf again, the gap to a safe Europa League rank is now five points. 3:24 goals from ten winless games is the last record of Schalke. They are numbers like those of a relegated team, if it weren’t for the passable first half of the season that Schalke offers a buffer to the lower region of the table.
“It is extremely difficult for us to accept that and of course extremely disappointing. It was not a good game, and you cannot talk it over. We lacked the idea, the punch, ”said Schalke’s sports director Jochen Schneider. Schalke had only 25 percent possession. Schneider was asked whether that was the club’s claim, the football the club wanted to play. Generally not, he said, “The bottom line is that too little”.
The criticism of coach Wagner will now continue to increase, it is the weakest second half of the club’s history. Schneider tried to take him out of the line of fire. It was “not a criticism of the coach, but of all of us. We all have to do things better and cannot present ourselves like we did in the last three games. It is a really bad run, we have to end it as soon as possible ”. The coach in duty in the next game? Next Saturday it will be against Werder Bremen. “Good performance is a must – by everyone. It is not right to fix that on the coach alone, ”said Schneider. But it is also inseparable from it. It looks like the 48-year-old German-American has lost his magic.
After the setbacks, Wagner had recently tried with destructive counter tactics, a lot of commitment – and little possession of the ball. “The play area was clearly defined. One team has possession of the ball, the other wanted to counterattack, ”he said after the game. Wagner was therefore asked to make ends meet with so little possession of the ball. “Yeah of course. We are currently unable to do anything else because of the situation, ”he replied. It was close to a declaration of bankruptcy. Wagner said: “We had to move away from the game idea, which has distinguished us for a long time, in order to simply defend again solidly and to give the opponent real little.”
In contrast to other ghost games, both teams realized from the start what it was about. Even without a spectator, emotions could be felt and heard even before the kick-off: Both teams pushed themselves loudly and went into the duels with commitment, loud and fighting strength after the kick-off.
At this point you will find content from {VendorNameReplacedByJS}
We need your consent to interact with or display content from {VendorNameReplacedByJS}.
–
– – –
Three days after the disappointing 2-2 after 2-0 lead in the derby at 1. FC Köln, Fortuna coach Rösler had declared the game a “must-win game”: “The team knows we have to win the game – it doesn’t matter how. ”Accordingly, the Rhinelanders also appeared and were initially game-determining – also because the guests withdrew far after the bitter 0: 3 against Augsburg and were concerned about securing. Schalke defended partly with five men on one line.
The first chance, however, was given to the guests, who struggled against a new negative experience. Daniel Caligiuri failed in the 21st minute to Düsseldorf goalkeeper Florian Kastenmeier. It was not only in this scene that it became clear why the royal blues were still without an away goal this year. In addition to the weaknesses at the end, Schalke coach Wagner recently complained about the many injuries. Important players were missing in Suat Serdar, Amine Harit and Omas Mascarell. In addition, there was the former Düsseldorf Benito Raman, who officially missed his possible first return to the old workplace due to thigh problems.
At this point you will find content from {VendorNameReplacedByJS}
We need your consent to interact with or display content from {VendorNameReplacedByJS}.
–
– – –
After the break, Schalke was initially a bit braver and surprisingly took the lead with a standard situation and a McKennie header. Fortuna reacted angrily and equalized with Henning’s 12th goal of the season after a mistake by Schalke’s goalkeeper Markus Schubert, which let a 30-meter free kick from Kevin Stöger bounce forward. A little later, it was a hair-raising defensive mistake that gave Fortuna the lead. Ozan Kabak played for Schalke Fortunas Karaman’s first game since the end of February, who headed for the well-deserved win. Düsseldorf has been unbeaten for six Bundesliga games, and for Fortuna it is the longest series since the start of the 2012/13 season.
At this point you will find content from Twitter
In order to interact with or display content from Twitter and other social networks, we need your consent.
–
– – –
Wagner described the situation at Schalke as “not subject to amusement tax” even before the game. It is “very, very important to know why we got into this situation”. The criticized coach pointed out that, under somewhat normal circumstances, they had shown “how we can play football”.
He had interpreted the clear bankruptcies in Dortmund and at home against Augsburg when the corona break started again as warning signals. “There are very, very obvious and relatively simple explanations that we have a lot of construction sites,” said Wagner shortly before the game started in Düsseldorf. They have not become less. On the contrary.
