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Kenan Karaman on yesterday’s defeat and upcoming fixtures
Looking back at Saturday’s (10/8) match at the Max-Morlock-Stadion, FC Schalke 04 captain Kenan Karaman speaks about the game of two halves, adding that “it’s an extremely bitter defeat.”
“We did really well in the first half and absolutely dominated Nürnberg. We won nearly every challenge, we had good chances and barely let our opponents have a shot on goal.”
After Ibrahima Cissé made it 1-0 in the 45th minute, S04 had further chances to add to their advantage, one of which fell to Karaman himself, but the chance ultimately went begging. “We set out to press Nürnberg high up the pitch, and we executed this plan well. It was a good overall team performance,” the 30-year-old praised his teammates.
Shortly before the break, Ron Schallenberg was controversially awarded a second yellow card, which changed the course of the game. “It was clearly the wrong decision. Caspar Jander was the one who had fouled Ron Schallenberg and made contact with his foot, not the other way round,” Karaman argued. “That’s what I said to the referee on the pitch at the time, but he thought otherwise.”
It was painful to concede twice in quick succession. We ought to have defended better on both occasions.
Now a man down, the away side were the shocked twice after half time. It only took two minutes for Lukas Schleimer to level the scores, before the aforementioned Jander completed Nürnberg’s comeback moments later. “It was painful to concede twice in quick succession. We ought to have defended better on both occasions. We weren’t tight enough to our opposition,” commented the attacker.
As they were down to ten men, Schalke were unable to implement their tactical plan of the first half, explained Karaman. But he also admitted: “As annoyed as we are, at the end of the day, we cannot hide behind the wrong decision of the referee.”
First-half performance provides hope for upcoming fixtures
A red card for Jander when the score was 2-1 meant it was all square again in terms of numbers on the pitch. “But after you’ve been playing with a man down for 20 minutes, particularly in this heat, then that usurps a lot of your energy. We were lacking that punch and the necessary concentration to put away our chances.”
Despite coming away with a defeat, the strong first-half showing will give Schalke hope for their next games, added Karaman. “I’ve seen our team develop again today. We need to analyse the game, build on our good first half and we want to progress to the next round of the DFB-Pokal next week.”
