“I would have taken another one”

Before the game against Hertha, Caligiuri had taken 21 penalties in a row, scoring all of them. Unfortunately this incredible run is now broken, something which has frustrated the German-Italian. He isn’t allowing himself to be too disheartened by it though: “If we had been given another penalty in the game aginst Hertha, I would have grabbed the ball to take another one,” said Caligiuri confidently. “To miss a penalty was a completely new feeling for me, and one that I don’t want to experience again, although I don’t think I ever will,” said the wide-man. According to Caligiuri, the reason he missed was that he perhaps had too many thoughts going around in his head at the time.

Caligiuri doesn’t want to dwell on the past and wants to forget about the performance and result against Hertha. The team’s focus has now been on the forthcoming away match at Borussia Mönchengladbach for a while now: “They are a good team, who play some very good football,” warned Caligiuri.

Hard work in the break should pay off

Even though a number of the Royal Blue players have been away with their respective countries in the international break, Schalke’s number 18 has a positive outlook on the past few days. “We have had a good week and have worked very hard. We have been highly concentrated and done a lot of good work in training. It is also important that we start enjoying our football again. We also need to eliminate the lapses in concentration that we’ve all had in the first couple of games.”

For Caligiuri, the poor start to the Bundesilga season is no huge worry, mainly because the season has only just started and the team also has too much quality to ultimately fail.  He is also aware of what must be improved: “We have had made too many mistakes in the past few games, which have then leads to lapses in concentration and then our passing game has also suffered. We’ve just lost possession too much,” explained Caligiuri, who hopes that the strikers will get more support in future. “We have to get our strikers more in the game, as they will otherwise continue to have a lack of chances and won’t be as effective in the box.” Hopefully this will be improved on Saturday (15th September) away at Borussia Mönchengladbach.