Schalke: Let Klaas Jan Huntelaar be the standard bearer

Schalke haven’t had a truly prolific striker in quite some time, so maybe it’s time to aspire to Klaas Jan Huntelaar as our standard-bearer.

There’s not much questioning what Schalke need most this coming transfer window. They need a striker, a striker, and a striker. But not just any striker, as we’ve come to find out this year. This year, we’ve seen plenty of strikers come and go, some a continuation of past experiments, some brand new.

And through it all, Schalke have retained the same troubles with having a consistent goal-scorer up top. There have been flashes of inspiration—Guido Burgstaller always looks so close to being the solution. Benito Raman looks like a piece, even if not the full solution. And Ahmed Kutucu is still a great unknown.

It’s been a long time since Schalke could count on a striker to score 15 goals, let alone ten, but that’s what this summer is all about. Whatever financial difficulties they’re facing in the coming transfer window, the bulk has to be funneled into finding someone like Klaas Jan Huntelaar and his inaugural campaign at Gelsenkirchen.

It was 2011/12 and Schalke had just acquired Huntelaar for what was, at the time, a record-setting deal. And the Dutchman wasted no time paying immediate dividends, winning the Golden Boot in Dortmund’s championship campaign.

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Huntelaar dropped off in the goal production after that, but there was one thing he never lost, and it’s the one thing that keeps giving me hope that Burgstaller has something left to say—that presence. It’s impossible to live without when you want to compete with the best.

After Huntelaar, Schalke started veering into a defense-first team. It’s not like that’s been all bad, we’ve seen some tremendous defensive talents come through and anchor this defense, but since that Golden-Boot winning campaign from Huntelaar, we’ve not come close to a repeat performance.

Given that Burgstaller might just be on his last leg, I have to believe that the last hope of a Huntelaar repeat is resting on who we might be able to acquire in the coming transfer window. Of course, you know where I’m going with this—Arkadiusz Milik is the man. Presence is his middle name.

Even when Huntelaar’s goals fell off, his presence in the box let players like Jefferson Farfan, Julian Draxler, Choupo-Moting, and more flow around Huntelaar and chip in a healthy supply of goals themselves.

If we replicate what Huntelaar provided, we have Raman, Kutucu, and Rabbi Matondo to carry on with all the rest.