Schalke: Amine Harit has only one person to be unhappy with

Amine Harit was unhappy at being benched for Schalke against Hoffenheim, but there’s only one person he should be unhappy with, and that’s himself.

David Wagner changed things up against Hoffenheim, dropping Amine Harit to the bench to field a three-back formation, reinstating Guido Burgstaller, and centering the Schalke hopes on Weston McKennie.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and this one almost paid off. With an early goal from McKennie and decent optimism around Die Knappen, there was a belief that things should have gone better. Which is a change-up from always thinking that at least things didn’t go worse.

But Amine Harit was not happy at being dropped. David Wagner made it clear that Harit’s No. 10 role was not feasible in the formation that he deployed, but for a competitor like Harit, that was never going to be good enough.

That said, if Harit is going to be unhappy with anyone, he needs to look no farther than himself. Harit has not been at his best lately. As the club has struggled, so too has he.

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So David Wagner had every right to try to change things up, and as Harit hasn’t been at his best, he wasn’t given a priority position in the figuring out of a new structure to try. It was just for a match, the results were inconclusive thus far, and it’s unlikely that Harit will remain on the bench, but even if he does, who’s to blame?

Harit is not the kind of guy that can lift the club all on his own. He’s a lot like Mesut Ozil in that regard. When things are going well, he’s spectacular, but when things go south, he struggles. That’s when you need a manager like David Wagner to make the tough, yet practical decision to make the sensible choices.

It’s hard to bench your best players, but it takes a good manager to do it. These are guys who should always be starting, who believe they should always be starting, so when they do take a seat, there are going to be plenty of questions.

It remains to be seen what approach Wagner will take to move forward from here, and if the Bundesliga ends up suspended, it may have to wait even longer, but for the time being, it’d rather know that we have a manager capable of making these decisions than worry about how Harit feels about starting a match on the bench.