FC Schalke was able to assess its performance when it won happily. That’s why it’s taking a realistic view of the 1-2 defeat in Braunschweig. The coach hadn’t lost his sense of humor either.
Despite the defeat at the end of the 2025 season, Schalke coach Miron Muslic had not lost his sense of humor. When asked after the 1-2 defeat at Eintracht Braunschweig what the first six months in Gelsenkirchen had done to him, he emphasized with a smile: “I came to Schalke without any gray hair, but now people confuse me with Thomas Linke.”
The former Schalke player is now 55 years old and quite gray. Muslic will have gotten a few more gray hairs in Braunschweig, because not much went right there, so he had to admit after the defeat: “It was well deserved. We are sportsmen and we have to accept that. We weren’t good, Braunschweig was really good.“
In view of his assessment after the game, S04 can only be happy that there is now at least a short winter break coming up. Because Muslic made it clear: ”We’re running on empty when you see how many people we’re missing. We had 13 players available from the first team, some of whom couldn’t play for more than 30 minutes. Then at some point you reach the point where nothing works anymore.”
And that point was reached in Braunschweig, yet Schalke still goes into the break in first place. It is not certain whether new players will arrive in the winter. Muslic is hoping for other additions instead. “I’d like to see some of the guys from my squad come back, then we’ll be fine.”
That has been proven so far. The Schalke players are also always humble. Muslic explains: “We are intact and can assess our path well. We are very happy. Hand on heart, who would have thought that we would be where we are in winter?”
Probably hardly anyone, which is why the assessment of S04 captain Kenan Karaman, who told Sky: “We can be proud of our first half of the season. But we know that we can’t buy anything with that. We’re now recharging our batteries and will be back in full force,” comes as no surprise.