Schalke Sack Slomka

Schalke 04 dis­missed coach Mirko Slomka on Sun­day, a day after the club suf­fered a 5–1 defeat at Werder Bre­men. The team had recently been elim­i­nated from the Cham­pi­ons League after a 2–0 on aggre­gate to Barcelona and the defeat against Werder saw them slip from sec­ond to third in the Bundesliga.

Slomka, 40, joined the Royal Blues as assis­tant coach to Ralf Rang­nick on 4 Octo­ber 2004, took charge of the club on 4 Jan­u­ary 2006. Slomka had suf­fered spec­u­la­tion through­out this sea­son that he would be replaced even though he had one of the bet­ter records in the league. Last sea­son he guided Schalke to sec­ond place and in 2006 he led them to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup. The club also sacked Slomka’s assis­tant coach Nestor El Maestro.

Schalke gen­eral man­ager Andreas Müller told the club’s offi­cial web­site:

“Over recent weeks I, too, have moved towards think­ing it is right to part com­pany with Mirko at the end of the sea­son. But after yesterday’s game at Werder Bre­men I came to the deci­sion to take this step. A sit­u­a­tion has arisen that I am con­vinced would have had a very neg­a­tive effect on the team over the next few weeks and thus put our remain­ing objec­tive for the sea­son, that of qual­i­fy­ing for the Cham­pi­ons League, at risk. That’s why we have taken this sud­den deci­sion. Mirko has done a good job for us, as is doc­u­mented by the suc­cess on the pitch. But over the course of this sea­son we have gained the impres­sion that the team has not pro­gressed in foot­balling terms. We have there­fore come to the opin­ion that this could be bet­ter achieved with a new coach.”

A key fac­tor in the dis­missal is said to have been unrest among the play­ers. Schalke cen­tral defender and cap­tain Marcelo Bor­don was one of many to voice dis­ap­proval of Slomka’s repeated line-up changes. That the coach hadn’t even set­tled on a clear for­ma­tion was another prob­lem, as was the fact that good per­for­mances were often rewarded with spots on the bench next time around while out-of-form stars kept being picked. An exam­ple for that was Dan­ish inter­na­tional striker Soren Larsen being over­looked or sub­sti­tuted for under­per­form­ing Kevin Kuryani. Larsen went pub­lic with his com­plaint a week ago.

I watched the Werder — Schalke game Sat­ur­day morn­ing and I was shocked to see Werder put up 5 on the Königs­blauen as they had been on a five-game unbeaten run in the Bun­desliga run prior to Saturday’s match. What was even more shock­ing was that Schalke were only able to score a lone goal in reply. The match was very open and was one of the more enter­tain­ing games I’ve watched this season.

Schalke have some excel­lent play­ers in the squad like keeper Manuel Neuer, Chris­t­ian Pan­der (who scored a thun­der­ing goal against Eng­land on his Ger­many debut), Fabian Ernst and Kevin Kuryani to name just a few. Schalke is one of the most pop­u­lar foot­ball teams in Ger­many and their fans are hun­gry for a league title. Their last win was way back in 1958 though they have claimed the DFB-Pokal (Ger­man Cup) as recently as 2002. It will be inter­est­ing to see who the club brings in long term to try and improve on their cur­rent position.

Mike Büskens and Youri Mul­der have been given tem­po­rary con­trol of first team affairs start­ing with a home game against Energie Cot­tbus on Tues­day. The duo were both part of the famous 1997 Uefa Cup win­ning side that sur­prised every­body by beat­ing Inter Milan in the final on penal­ties. Büskens has been coach­ing Schalke’s reserve team since 2005 in the West­falen Oberliga. He played 257 times for the Königs­blauen and twice won the Ger­man Cup to go with the Uefa Cup tri­umph. Youri Mul­der played for Schalke between 1993 and 2002 win­ning nine Dutch caps in the process. He had been recently work­ing as a TV foot­ball expert for Dutch chan­nel NOS.

Bild am Son­ntag news­pa­per reported that Schalke has three can­di­dates for one of the most cov­eted jobs in the Bun­desliga: Eric Gerets (Olympique Mar­seille), Fred Rut­ten (Twente Enschede) and Dick Advo­caat (Zenit St. Peters­burg). The last is the most intrigu­ing as Schalke 04 and FC Zenit Saint Peters­burg signed a part­ner­ship agree­ment to work closely on improv­ing football-related issues.