Champions League: Schalke 04

By: Cesar | September 17th, 2007

I’m not going to write too detailed a preview of the Schalke 04 match at the Arena AufSchalke, Gelsenkirchen, Germany Tuesday night. For a very detailed analysis of the game, please go here.

What I will say is that this match is about as must-win a game as Valencia has had in a while.

They looked poor against inferior competition this weekend. This isn’t Almeria or Real Valladolid anymore, my friends. This is the Champions League, the best of the best. The cream of the crop.

Schalke 04. I don’t know much about them. According to Wikipedia:

FC Schalke 04 is a German football club originally from the Schalke district of Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia. Schalke has long been one of the most popular football teams in Germany, even though major successes have been rare since the club’s heyday in the 1930s and early 1940s. The football team is part of a larger sports club. With over 65,000 members (August 2007) it is the second largest sports club in Germany. Other activities offered by the club include basketball, handball, and track and field. FC Schalke 04 won its first major European trophy in 1997 by defeating F.C. Internazionale Milano on penalty kicks for the UEFA Cup in Milan.

They were barely nipped for the German Bundesliga title by Timo Hildebrand’s Stuttgart last season. They aren’t lightweights, that’s for sure. Coach Quique Sanchez Flores knows this, telling a press conference today, “Schalke could easily have been Bundesliga champions last season. They are very strong in defense, play with a good strategy and can cause us a lot of problems.”

One thing in our favor is that Schalke’s coach, Mirko Slomka is banned for the game. Slomka was given a one-match touchline ban for a gesture he made to the referee in a UEFA Cup game against Nancy last season. So what’s to say he won’t try to contact the interim coaches using a Blackberry or text device?

“My mobile is always switched off during games,” the coach said at a news conference on the eve of the game. “It will be the same on Tuesday. (Interim coach) Oliver has a lot of experience and they will do just as well as I can.”

Hopefully he won’t pull the same stunt as Chelsea’s Jose Mourhino did a few years back when he allegedly kept in touch with an interim coach through a small microphone.

Technology or not, we’re in peril as I’ve mentioned before. Our tactical acumen has left us, our once-proud defense is now a shaky foundation and team chemistry is an issue, as coach and players don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye.

Regardless, this game could set the tone for our campaign in Europe, let alone Spain, for the entire season. It seems silly to see this as a must-win game so early in the year, but that’s what it is.

We’ll be going into hostile territory, against a club desperate to erase their own bumbling errors of the past few years and show their supporters they’re serious about claiming hardware this season.

I don’t know what to think. On one hand, I think the return of players such as Marchena, Miguel and Albelda could spark us some.

I think one thing Flores could do to really light a fire on the team would be to start Hildebrand in place of Canizares. Look, I love Canete. But the future is now. We have this world-class keeper from Germany sitting on the bench, a keeper with experience against Schalke in his home country. Can you imagine how stoked he’d be to see his first action with Valencia in his home country? It’d be a tactical move that would make me proud.

Quique read the riot act to the boys this weekend after the game. So maybe a fire will be lit.
Then again, has anything you’ve seen of Valencia inspired you this season?

Viel Erfolg! (’Good luck’ in German) … We’re gonna need it.