Schalke coach Karel Geraerts is enthusiastic about his meeting with the German president and talks about locker-room secrets that have been leaked to the public.

Karel Geraerts has only been Schalke 04’s coach for two months, but he has already met the most senior fan of the traditional football club. “I had a good conversation with Frank-Walter Steinmeier and was pleasantly surprised by 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 honour at the reception hosted by 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, ‘so of course we talked about Schalke.’

No sooner was he back in Gelsenkirchen than the problems piled up again. Internal information about the mood in the dressing room and criticism of his tactics appeared in Sport Bild – and annoyed the coach. But he didn’t talk about that with the team, Geraerts said on Thursday, “we talked about the game, I gave my opinion, the players gave theirs – it was all quite normal. What is not normal is that everything comes out of the dressing room. That’s not good.”

Geraerts had plenty of praise for his team after the 4-0 win over VfL Osnabrück: “It’s a team with good personalities, with good characters.” On Sunday (1:30 p.m./Sky) at table neighbors Hansa Rostock, the small upward trend is to be continued: “The victory has given self-confidence.” The coach definitely has to do without the injured Dominick Drexler, Yusuf Kabadayi and Assan Ouedraogo.