With the training starts of Schalke 04 and Hertha BSC, the promotion race in the 2nd league begins.
Warm applause erupted when Simon Terodde and his teammates entered the lush green in the Park Stadium. The Bundesliga return mission began at Schalke 04 on Monday in front of around 2,400 fans.
“We need the cohesion from the second half of the season, it has to carry us again. Our goal is promotion,” said team manager Gerald Asamoah. You need to close ranks with the supporters “to bring this energy back onto the pitch. The boys know that. That will be the key to promotion.”
The symbiosis of team and fans, which became clear on Monday exactly 30 days after the painful first division relegation, should lead the royal blue back up in the coming season. That was also an issue at a team meeting on Monday morning, at which coach Thomas Reis, sports director Peter Knäbel and sports director Andre Hechelmann spoke about the team. “It will be a very difficult, very demanding season,” said Knäbel. The feeling that develops is “a very good one”.
Hertha BSC is also getting into the preparations
At Hertha BSC, just five weeks before the start of the second division, they are quite far away from such (positive) flushes of emotion. “Hertha is still in intensive care,” said President Kay Bernstein in “kicker” – and of course meant the financial situation of the second Bundesliga relegated. After all, “there are now more doctors and more helpers at the bedside” than a year ago when he took office.
In terms of sport, there are big question marks behind the capital club, where coach Pal Dardai also asked for the first training session on Monday. What is the chaos club of recent years capable of in the lower house in the future – after 374 million Windhorst burned in four years, after Jürgen Klinsmann and after Fredi Bobic? Can a club that has been through so much and now also has to save 50 percent in salaries in the course of the upheaval, actually with teams like Schalke and Hamburger SV, but also with stable second division clubs like Fortuna Düsseldorf or FC St. Pauli to record?
Will FC Schalke 04 be promoted directly?
Schalke, who have already signed four newcomers with midfielders Ron Schallenberg (SC Paderborn) and Paul Seguin (Union Berlin), goalkeeper Marius Müller (FC Luzern) and attacker Bryan Lasme (Arminia Bielefeld), believes the imponderables of the 2nd division are acceptable know. “This time we know what’s coming. It will be dirty from time to time,” predicts Asamoah, but you have a team that is ready to give “everything” for promotion.
Schalke has played second-rate for the fifth time since the Bundesliga was introduced. In 1982 and 1984, as in 2022, direct resurgence was achieved. Only after being relegated to the Bundesliga in 1988 did it take three seasons before the club was allowed to play in the top flight again.