FC Schalke 04 suffered an embarrassing defeat the Allianz Arena on Saturday, falling 5-0 to Bayern Munich. Here are five things we learned from the blowout loss.
Although FC Schalke 04 came into Matchday 19 with a world of optimism after a professional display against Borussia Mönchengladbach in their first match of the Rückrunde, they exited the Allianz Arena with their confidence shattered.
For all the praise given to Schalke for their improvements and all the rhetoric around this being a “revenge” game, it was Bayern who made the statement that they are still on a different level from the rest of the clubs in the Bundesliga.
Schalke lost 5-0 to Bayern and never looked like a team playing Champions League caliber football for any part of the 90 minutes. It’s important not to overreact at such a loss, since Bayern have done this to top clubs at the Allianz before.
Here are five things we learned from this horrible loss for the Royal Blues.
1. Young players are still growing
The likes of Markus Schubert and Ahmed Kutucu have become fan favorites with their performances over the past couple of months, and Schalke have a wealth of young players who have serious star potential in a few years.
But that’s the key. “In a few years”. As impressive as they’ve been for Schalke in 2019-2020, fans must remember that these players are still learning and growing, so there will be pains along the way. A high-profile away match against Bayern is the toughest possible environment in German football, and it showed.
Schubert came into this game with a load of pressure and made a few woeful mistakes. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s still a good goalkeeper with loads of potential, but the mistakes are a reminder that he is still young. It’s important not to overload him with pressure.
The same can be said for forwards Rabbi Matondo and Ahmed Kutucu, who frequently made poorly-timed runs or failed to time their passes on counterattacks correctly. These are difficult skills that show how much development it takes for forwards to truly become scoring machines.