FC Schalke 04 is looking for its seventh coach within two years. To succeed Frank Kramer, who is on leave, there is a favorite in the heavily reeling Bundesliga promoted team. Meanwhile, two club icons see massive quality problems in the team.
At the Bundesliga club FC Schalke 04, the search for a successor to the suspended coach Frank Kramer is in full swing. It is conceivable that the seventh trainer of the Revierklub will be announced within two years this Thursday. After Kramer's leave of absence on Wednesday, the Bundesliga penultimate moved the non-public training session on Thursday from morning to afternoon. On Sunday Schalke has to play at Hertha BSC after the heavy cup defeat at TSG Hoffenheim on Tuesday (1: 5) and five competitive bankruptcies in a row. The new coach will probably be responsible by then.
The favorite is Thomas Reis, who was on leave from VfL Bochum a month ago but is still under contract there. The 49-year-old was supposed to switch from VfL to Schalke in the summer. However, this failed at the time due to his employment with Bochum, where Thomas Letsch is now head coach. It is almost impossible that promotion coach and club icon Mike Büskens will again act as interim boss. The Düsseldorfer, who had worked as Kramer's assistant coach, categorically ruled this out again and again. Schalke therefore only explicitly named assistant coach Matthias Kreuzer as the temporarily responsible coach for the first units after the separation from Kramer.
Ex-Schalke coach Domenico Tedesco, who was also speculated about, is unlikely to come. According to information from Sport1, Bruno Labbadia has rejected the Knappen bosses around Peter Knäbel, with whom the former striker has already worked at Hamburger SV. However, it is not known how realistic the Labbadia option was. Schalke is forced to save anyway. The new coach must not cost much again. In addition to Kramer, Dimitrios Grammozis is also on the club's payroll.
Meanwhile, two club legends are massively critical. Also on the team. For Klaus Fischer, Kramer is not the only one to blame for the sporting crisis. "The biggest problems are currently clearly caused by the players - the basic virtues are missing, everything doesn't fit together," said the club's record scorer to the editorial network Germany. He misses the greatest possible commitment in many professionals. "Many people could look for a duel, but nobody really attacks," criticized the 72-year-old: "You have to go for it and not rely on your team-mates. The boys are just not aggressive enough."
Olaf Thon also gives a sportingly devastating verdict on the Royal Blues' season so far. "My impression is that the team is playing even worse at the moment than in the 2020/21 relegation season," he told "Kicker". However, the 1990 World Champion recognizes one important difference to the situation two years ago: "In contrast to back then, the team seems intact to me." This unity "just doesn't work on the field yet," said Thon: "It's just a quality problem."
