Schalke coach Karel Geraerts is enthusiastic about a meeting with the German President and talks about cabin internals that went public.

Karel Geraerts has only been Schalke 04 coach for two months, but he has already met the highest-ranking fan of the traditional soccer club. “I had a good conversation with Frank-Walter Steinmeier, I was pleasantly surprised at how open he was. He knows Schalke very well,” the Belgian reported on his visit to the Federal President. The 41-year-old was one of the guests of honor at the reception for the Belgian royal couple in Berlin.

“It was a great honor for me and I felt very welcome,” said Geraerts. Steinmeier is an avowed fan of the Royal Blues, “of course we talked about Schalke”.

As soon as he returned to Gelsenkirchen, the problems started to mount up again. Internal details about the atmosphere in the dressing room and criticism of his tactics appeared in Sport Bild – and annoyed the coach. However, Geraerts said on Thursday that he had not discussed this with the team: “We talked about the game, I gave my opinion, the players gave theirs – it was all completely normal. What’s not normal is that everything goes out of the dressing room. That’s not good.”

Geraerts actually had a lot of praise for his team after the 4-0 win against VfL Osnabrück: “It’s a team with good personalities, with good characters.” On Sunday (1.30pm/Sky) at table rivals Hansa Rostock, the small upward trend is set to continue: “The win has given us confidence.” The coach will definitely have to do without the injured Dominick Drexler, Yusuf Kabadayi and Assan Ouedraogo