Schalke 04: “Awkward” one of many possible words for Revierderby

Schalke’s young American Weston McKennie referred to the Revierderby as “awkward,” but that’s just one of many unflattering words for it.

For the most part, we try to stay positive here at Release the Knappen and not dive into accusing players of any nonsense, or moaning about the mismanagement of the club. But Schalke doesn’t always make that easy and the Revierderby was one such instance of that.

After the match, Weston McKennie did a lengthy interview and when asked what the experience of the Revierderby was like, he responded by calling it, at length, awkward. Of course, that was in reference to the quietness, and the complete lack of atmosphere, but it got us thinking what other words we would use to describe the Revierderby.

So we put it on Twitter to see what you thought, and, sorting through the expletives, probably the best one-word description of the affair that you provided was “nightmare.”

Schalke can find positives words in Revierderby

It was certainly a nightmare, the kind of thing that you really don’t want to see, that you don’t think is possible, but it happens anyway, regardless of how you feel about it. Apt. Very apt. It was a nightmare.

The word that I keep using is emasculating. That feeling of having your manhood taken away from you. This time, rather forcibly, and this time, at the hands of a foe you’d thought you could at least stand up to and defend yourself against.

That was what the truly shocking thing was about this Revierderby—how little fight the Royal Blues had. Like literally zero.

But since we stay positive here, let’s talk about some words that may evoke more of a positive spin. How about bottoming out? Sure, that’s two words and sounds like another negative, but sometimes a club in a spiral needs to bottom out to refocus on what comes next. You’d have thought the pause would do that, but it didn’t, so now we’re left wondering if losing to our most hated rivals 4-0 in front of the entire world would be enough for them to push the reset.

In the name of painfully speculative optimism, we’re going to say yes. There’s nowhere to go from here but up. Augsburg is up next, they are in even more of a struggle than Schalke are, and it just takes one positive result to remember how good of a team you actually are.

“Restart.” That’s the word I’ll settle on. The Revierderby is a restart.