Schalke has had an epidemic of letting players go for free over the past couple of years. If they want to move forward, this has to end this year.
Over the past few years, Schalke have seen some of their best young and exciting players leave the club for free. It’s something I wrote about in detail at These Football Times about three years ago and it hasn’t alleviated.
It’s bad enough that guys like Leon Goretzka leave us (and soon Alexander Nubel too), but when we get zero financial return, it hurts even worse. It’s an insult on top of injury and it sets the club back. Rinsing and repeating this awful policy is still preventing the club from moving forward.
Yet here we are this summer with three more guys leaving that could have fetched a lot of money. But 2020 has to be the last graduating class of the Bosman—Benjamin Stambouli, Daniel Caligiuri and Alexander Nubel.
Three guys that began the season as starters, three guys who will walk away at the end of the year, when feasibly we could have seen £50m+ coming in the other way for our reinvestment.
So let’s look ahead.
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- Schalke 04: David Wagner just has to make it to the end of the season
- Schalke 04: At least we still have Weston McKennie
In 2021, we have two major contracts expiring—Malick Thiaw and Alessandro Schopf. Thiaw is already linked to exits this summer, but with a going fee of just £7m, it’s crucial that Die Knappen are able to lock him down to another deal. Someone as clearly talented as he cannot be allowed to walk for that little, but he also cannot be allowed to walk for free.
Schopf may not be a big part of Schalke right now, and they’ve given him plenty of chances to be, but it just hasn’t worked out. So if the verdict is that he doesn’t have a place with the club, we need to sell him next summer, not wait and see what happens next season before making a decision that leaves the club handcuffed.
It really is a crippling situation to be in when all your players leave you and you get nothing in return. Sure, Schalke continues to churn out young players with incredible talent and this policy allows them to graduated into bigger roles, but there are better ways to accomplish this end.
With the extensions of Amine Harit and Weston McKennie very recently, it’s likely that this problem is finally being eviscerated. Finally.