Schalke: Malick Thiaw decision more important than ever

There have been far too many crucial, timely decisions that Schalke have had to make lately, and Malick Thiaw has put them in a crunch to make another.

It’s commonplace that a talented Schalke youngster starts attracting the attention of all the heavy-hitters across Europe, but it’s the other commonplace that needs to be avoided—losing him. Right now, that youngster is Malick Thiaw and his situation at the club is going to require some kind of salvaging.

Thiaw is just another centerback with a world of talent going forward and given the way this season turned out, with the tumultuous injury situation on defense, his relevance to the club has never been higher.

Hence the need to preserve his stay beyond this year, especially given the circumstances that his contract situation presents the club. Not to mention his current status.

As it stands, Schalke are dangerously close to losing Thiaw in two ways—for way less than he’s worth now, or for free later.

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With just a year left on his contract and no “big boy” contract yet negotiated, the price he would be going for if we were to sell this summer would be a measly £7m. Which is ridiculous, because in about a year or two, that value would have tripled at the very least.

But if he wants to leave this summer and Die Knappen don’t want to let him go, all he has to do is wait it out, get some experience, and walk for free next year, when no one can tell him otherwise. Then he can choose wherever he wants to go and be done with it.

These are the kinds of crunch-time situations that Schalke has struggled to deal with over the past couple of years and it will all be decided this summer. There are three possible outcomes here, only one counts as a success. That success is a contract extension in the coming weeks. If we sell him this summer, we failed. If we don’t sell him but let him enter the final year of his contract, it’s arguably an even bigger fail, because then we have to do the same old song and dance of will he stay or will he walk for free.

It all comes down to this upcoming transfer window, whenever that happens to be. Hopefully come three months down the road this conversation will be a much different one.