At the beginning of the second half of the season, Moritz Jenz stabilised Schalke 04’s defence. Just in time for the match against Frankfurt, the 24-year-old is fit again.

For weeks, there has been almost daily talk about Moritz Jenz at FC Schalke 04. Time and again, coach Thomas Reis had to face the question of when the 24-year-old central defender would finally be fit again – and just in time for the last Bundesliga home match against Eintracht Frankfurt on Saturday (3.30 pm/Sky), Jenz is indeed back.

“I’m fit again,” said Jenz after training on Tuesday. “I will train normally with the team again this week and hope to be able to play against Frankfurt. The coach just has to give me permission.”

Jenz has been plagued with thigh problems for the past month and a half, with the defender missing five of the last seven Bundesliga games for this reason. The Schalke side initially spoke only of a strain in the FC Lorient loanee, but it proved to be extremely persistent.

“I had an injury to my rear thigh,” said Jenz. After a two-week break at the beginning of April, he was back in the starting eleven for the home match against Hertha BSC (5:2) – in retrospect, probably a little too early. “I wasn’t 100 per cent fit then, but I really wanted to play. Unfortunately, I then got something new on top of the injury. “

We decided that it didn’t make sense if I wasn’t 100 per cent fit.

Moritz Jenz.

The consequence: three more weeks off. “We decided that it doesn’t make sense if I’m not 100 per cent fit,” he explains. “Then I can’t help the team.”

However, Moritz Jenz proved impressively at the beginning of the second half of the season that he can definitely help the Schalke team when he is injury-free. In his first nine Bundesliga games for Schalke, he remained without defeat (three wins, six draws).

*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***