His move from VfL Bochum to FC Schalke 04 made waves. Leon Goretzka remembers.

His transfer from VfL Bochum to FC Schalke 04 made waves. When Leon Goretzka moved from the then second division club to their neighbors in Gelsenkirchen in 2013, many VfL fans resented him.

Now the international has revealed in the “Copa TS” podcast that he was also mobbed in the schoolyard in Bochum. “It didn’t have a Manuel Neuer dimension,” he said. “But for a 17-year-old, or I was just turning 18 at the time, it was quite a board. I also went to school in Bochum, where there were a lot of Bochum fans.”

Goretzka graduated from the Alice Salomon vocational college in Bochum in 2014, not far from Bochum’s Ruhrstadion, which had been his sporting home until then. He once had a drink thrown at him in the school playground. “I almost had a laceration,” he recalled. But overall, he coped with it quite well. “That’s just the way it is,” he said, probably alluding to the rivalry between the clubs and the somewhat rougher tone in the Ruhr region. “I also knew how to defend myself.”

The portrayal of his transfer was also to blame. “It was made out that you had betrayed the club you were a fan of and had played for since you were little,” explained Goretzka. But that was not the case. After all, he also brought his club a considerable transfer fee of around four million euros in total.

That really hurts when you think about where Schalke are now. Because back then it was an extremely great time, you have to say that

Leon Goretzka

Goretzka played for VfL for eleven years, then five years for S04, before moving to FC Bayern Munich on a free transfer in 2018. “It was a really great time,” he says of his time with the Royal Blues. “At times, we had five players under the age of 20 on the pitch and played really well up front and in the Champions League.”

Schalke fought unsuccessfully for a long time to keep him. In vain. Goretzka became one of the many top players who were able to leave the club on a free transfer in those years – and thus also contributed to the financial difficulties. Today, he suffers with the Knappen: “It’s extremely painful when you think about where Schalke are now. Because back then it was an extremely great time, you have to say that.”

He did not see this crash coming. Not even when Domenico Tedesco suddenly had no more success. “I was 100 percent sure that it would continue. Especially because you didn’t see all the dangers of big players somehow going crazy or the cohesion no longer being there, because that was already the key to success,” Goretzka looks back. “That’s why it was difficult for me to understand. I also spoke to a lot of people. But as is so often the case, nobody had a real explanation.”

FC Schalke 04 are now playing against relegation from the second division after being relegated from the Bundesliga for the second time in three years and VfL Bochum are playing in the Bundesliga for the third year in a row. Nobody would have thought that ten years ago either