Schalke 04: Amine Harit being asked to do a multi-person job

Amine Harit was powerless to alter Schalke’s fortunes in the Revierderby, but to be fair, he’s trying to do a job that requires more way people.

There was not a single positive Schalke performer in the Revierderby. Which is why we didn’t hand out a man of the match award in our player ratings. This is doubly true in the attack, where everyone might as well have been playing with lead trousers. There was no movement, no gumption, no cohesion. Amine Harit was guilty of it too.

The problem is, Amine Harit is the “star” of this attack, per se, and that means that more is expected of him, as well it should be.

Which is a problem in and of itself because Amine Harit, as we’ve seen against Dortmund and as we’ve seen so many times previously, is one man—an incredibly talented man, mind you—being asked to do a two- or three-man job. That’s not very fair.

Schalke must support Amine Harit

Amine Harit is everything to this Die Knappen attack. Literally everything. He’s our biggest goal threat, he’s our chief creator, he’s our best dribbler. He is everything. Which is why it’s so easy to negate this attack.

Shut down Harit and you shut down the attack. Plain and simple. If an opponent shuts down Harit, they shut down Schalke’s main creator, instigator, and goal producer.

That’s pretty dicey, wouldn’t you say?

It’s not like David Wagner hasn’t tried solutions. Rabbi Matondo and Benito Raman looked like solutions and they still could be. Suat Serdar is a weight lifted, but he is needed in the midfield so much that counting on him to attack is another dicey prospect.

Harit can’t be successful if he’s the only consistent contributor of three major offensive categories. And until we can find other capable attackers to pad the formation around him, it will continue to be incredibly easy to shut the Royal Blue attack down altogether.

Sure, that means having a striker, but it means more than that too. It means Matondo stepping up or getting more competition, maybe it means Boujellab and Mercan stepping up and stepping in. Whatever has to happen to ensure that Harit isn’t the only guy out there who can make a goal more than a pipe dream.

Until that happens, this attack will sputter and wilt like it’s been doing far too often. Harit is still growing too, but he won’t be able to if he’s the only lightswitch in this attack.