Chapter 153: Signing in Progress

The reinforcement of the striker position is only one of the components of Magath's improvement of strength, but it is the position he values ​​most. Since Kuranyi's ups and downs, the striker position has been supported by Jiang Hao, but Magath does not care. All hopes may be pinned on rookies with only half a season of experience, so finding guns is a top priority.

But in the past two seasons, Schalke has performed brilliantly, and the tree is naturally attractive, which also brings great difficulties to Helter's work.

For example, it is no secret that Kuranyi's status is declining now. Almost all of Europe knows that Schalke 04 will definitely make great efforts to introduce strikers, so Huntelaar's agent Osterwell has the courage to ask for sky-high prices.

Of course, Helter knew that the opponent was ripping off. Even if Schalke was in desperate need of a striker, they would not be willing to pay such a sum of money to Huntelaar whose status could not be guaranteed-so far in Serie A, Coppa Italia He has only played eight times in the third-tier competition of the Champions League and scored two goals. This statistic is tied to his Dutch international name, which is really hard to be convincing.

However, Huntelaar's excellent finishing ability in front of the goal really tempted Schalke. Helter found the club chairman Clemens to discuss. Well, it will be more beneficial to us at that time, the pressure from those giants is not a little bit, if they can't win the championship, I think they will lower themselves, Horst."

Halt nodded, now it seems that this is the best way. It is very difficult for AC Milan to win the championship, just look at the Serie A standings. They have already been opened up by their rivals Inter Milan by six points, and if they want to win the Champions League, with Leonardo's coaching ability, it is not an exaggeration to say that if they fail to win the championship, don't say whether the Milan executives will Huntelaar himself will lose patience when the coaching is changed and the players are cleaned. After all, if he joins a giant and fails to win the championship, the 26-year-old is definitely unwilling to waste his career meaninglessly on the bench of a giant, so Schalke 04 decided to continue to follow this goal.

But now they have joined the battle against Real Madrid superstar Ruud van Nistelrooy. While Magath led the team to an away game against Werder Bremen, the defending Bundesliga champion broke out to join the battle against Van Nistelrooy.

This is tantamount to proving in disguise that the purchase of Huntelaar has not been successful for the time being, but regarding the introduction of Van Nistelrooy, the views of all parties are quite different. The Spanish media favored Van Nistelrooy's departure. After all, since he suffered a severe right knee meniscus injury last season that led to season reimbursement, his position has been gradually replaced by Higuain and Benzema. He has only played once this season on behalf of Real Madrid. In a club like Real Madrid , Losing his position means that the career of a wealthy family has come to an end. In the eyes of the Spanish media, joining Schalke 04 is not an insult to the king of the small penalty area.

But the media in Gelsenkirchen seriously questioned Magath's choice.

On the Internet, the editor-in-chief Basil Ackermann wrote a paragraph on the matter: "Schalke 04 targeted Klaas Jan Huntelaar before, and I would say it was a good deal, Henry Traal is only 26 years old this year. He couldn't play in Milan because of the mistrust of the head coach. At least his health is not a problem. Schalke can help him find his scoring status. This is A win-win choice, but the introduction of Van Nistelrooy, I am afraid that as long as the real Schalke fans will question whether this choice is correct, Van Nistelrooy has a glorious past, but he is about to turn 34 years old, and he has just experienced it in the past season Injury, not to mention the peak state, even a stable scoring state is difficult to guarantee. Schalke is a team that wants to defend the league title and make a big difference in the Champions League. It is not a waste recycling bin, at least for now. , this option is really not a good choice, I hope Magath will not regret it."

As the newspaper with the largest circulation in Gelsenkirchen, its opinions are very guiding in this city,

Because of this, most fans look down on Ruud van Nistelrooy's joining. But in fact, regardless of his performance after coming, Schalke will face two difficulties in order to persuade this once superb penalty area killer to join.

The first is to stand out from the competition. Although Ruud van Nistelrooy lost his position in Real Madrid, but his experience and ability, there are many teams interested in him in the five major leagues. Atletico Madrid, Hamburg, Naples, Palermo have all expressed enough interest, and there are even local tyrants in the Middle East waving banknotes, hoping to attract Ruud van Nistelrooy to West Asia for gold.

Perhaps compared with these opponents, Schalke 04's advantage is reflected in the fact that they are still the champions of the five major leagues. At least in the last one or two seasons, this king of the small penalty area can continue to be active in the mainstream view of Europe.

But the second problem, that is, Ruud's salary problem is difficult to solve. Real Madrid chairman Florentino has already released words before, in order to express the club's gratitude to the Dutch superstar, as long as there is enough sincerity to take away Ruud van Nistelrooy, Real Madrid will not take a penny in the transfer fee. Although this saved Schalke a lot of expenses and seemed to reduce the difficulty, Van Nistelrooy's personal salary was a headache for Helt.

When Ruud van Nistelrooy joined Real Madrid from Manchester United, his annual salary was 6.8 million euros. Now he is definitely not worth the price. Helter hopes that the team will clearly focus on Sunday and try to cut Ruud van Nistelrooy's salary to 5 million euros. Below the euro, lower than the current annual salary of Zhou Tiancheng, but his agent firmly expressed that he could not accept it.

The annual salary represents not only income, but also the status in the team. Roger Lindsay, Van Nistelrooy's agent, knows this very well. Ferguson made up his mind to sell Ruud van Nistelrooy to Real Madrid at a low price. It must not happen again. If you want to "condescend" from Real Madrid to Schalke, you must have the maximum salary in the team, which is higher than that of captain Westermann and Zhou Tiancheng.

"Mr. Helt, do you think Luther's resume is not as good as a European golden boy who has never won the Champions League?"

It was this attitude that Lindsay killed. Schalke's negotiations with Ruud van Nistelrooy were once again blocked.

Fortunately, the club moved fast enough in this window. According to the signing list submitted by Magath, all the first candidates are being contacted at the same time.

According to Magath's vision, what the team needs to enrich is the strength of the substitute lineup. At the same time, individual positions in the main lineup, such as the left-back position with serious loopholes, must be strengthened, including the midfield with the strongest overall configuration. Magath still Thinking that there is room for improvement, the introduction of Holtby was originally intended to strengthen the defense, but in the past half of the season, his overall performance has not been satisfactory to Magath, and his ability to withstand pressure under high pressure is too weak. Therefore, in Magath's signing list, the players in the midfield position are still the most. He has been working hard to reduce his team's dependence on Zhou Tiancheng.

In addition, Magath believes that the team still needs to strengthen the wing configuration. At present, the only players who can calmly cope with the intensity of the Bundesliga and the Champions League are Asamoah, Farfan and Altintop.

But this time, Magath put the goal of wing reinforcement in the far east. Zhou Tiancheng's teammate of the national team, Hao Junmin, the winger fast horse of the Chinese Super League Tianjin Teda Club, is his first choice for signings on the wing.

When this news broke out, not to mention the German media, even the Chinese fans themselves did not believe it. The first reaction was: fake?

Just kidding, if it is true, wouldn't it mean that the championship teams in the five major leagues will have three Chinese players? Some fans couldn't believe it at first.

Of course, many fans emotionally hope this is true, but at the same time they rationally express that even if everyone wants to, this deal still won't work. Although Hao Junmin's contract with the club is about to expire, theoretically he will be free soon, but TEDA will definitely throw out a contract to bind him immediately. It is a "tradition" in Chinese football to keep the core players of the team. Back then, the South American powerhouse Penarul came to China to play a friendly match and fell in love with Hao Haidong. As a result, the Bayi team directly tore up the invitation letter sent by the other party, blocking the possibility of studying abroad with a sentence of "organizational needs". Later, there were Premier League clubs in the Wanda period. It's ridiculous that Wanda has a price tag of 10 million pounds for China's top striker who is at his peak... If there is no subsequent one-pound transfer, it will not be so ironic.

To be honest, Chinese fans really don't dare to hope that more local Chinese players can go out. This is not a question of strength.

Not only the Chinese media, but the German media reacted even more.

The newspaper, the editor-in-chief of the football edition, Basil Ackerman, was directly called by the editor-in-chief to the office to assign tasks.

"Basil, I have to work hard for you to go out and go to Bremen."

Ackerman froze for a moment: "The team is in Bremen now, why, Him, what happened?"

Sim opened a webpage in front of him and asked him to come over and look at it while saying: "There may be another player from a Chinese club coming to the team according to the news from the Chinese media."

"It's impossible, Sim, don't be kidding. We are not a relegation team for dawdling, and not everyone can get in."

"It's hard to say now, but whether it's true or not, it's always a concern, isn't it? We must be the first Bundesliga team to have three Chinese players."

"This number one is not a good thing... Well, Sim, I'll go right away." Basil Ackerman said in a low voice: "It's better not to be true. If this continues, Schalke will soon become the Chinese national team." gone."

In the pre-match press conference against Werder Bremen, Magath heard more questions about signings than in the next game. He could only force everyone's attention back to this game: " Regarding the signing of the team, that is the job of the club, and the decision is not up to me. All I can decide is to win this game. I refuse to answer questions that are not related to this. You have found the wrong person.”

Basil Ackerman, who came here with curiosity and enthusiasm, was disappointed like many colleagues, feeling that he had made a trip in vain.

...

In this game against Bremen, everyone originally predicted that there was no suspense - Schalke, who is absent from the core, is in danger, and Bremen, who is ranked third, is likely to avenge the German Super Cup at the beginning of the season.

But Schalke once again slapped those who looked down on them. In the first half, Magath formed a 4-5-1 formation, relying on Jiang Hao's speed in the frontcourt to defend and counterattack, withstood Bremen's offensive, decisively changed to the familiar 4-3-3 in the second half, Asamo In the first five minutes of the game, A cut from the left and broke through to create a penalty for the team. Rakitic took the penalty to help the team take the lead. Then Bremen began to counterattack aggressively, but in the 70th minute Rakitic's direct A free kick broke the score and rewritten the score to 2:0, completely killing the suspense.

For Magath, the biggest significance of this result is that he won a "six-point battle". He knows that Schalke's rise in the past two seasons has been accused of relying on Zhou Tiancheng to win, and he doesn't care about this at all. Will this victory remove the label of "Zhou's Dependency" in front of the media, or in his view, this is not a fault at all.

There is a leader who is strong enough in all aspects, why not rely on him? Doesn't Barcelona still rely on Harvey? If Italy in 2006 lacked Cannavaro and Pirlo, could they still win the World Cup?

In the final analysis, Schalke's results are not convincing enough, and the Bundesliga championship is not enough. Have to strive for a breakthrough in the Champions League.

Magath thought of the scene where the players chanted the championship in the halftime lounge, and at this moment he felt a strong resonance in his heart.

...

On the way back to Gelsenkirchen by train from Bremen, Magath received a call from Helter. The first call on the other end was a high-pitched voice: "Good news, Felix, the signing you fancy Goal, we got one."

"Who is it?" Magath also became interested.

"Alexander Baumjohn! A player from our youth academy is finally coming back, haha!"

Magath was a little surprised. He didn't expect him to be the first one. Baumjohn is now a Bayern player, so he let go so easily and gave it to the championship opponent.

But it is true, Baumjohn moved from Borussia Mönchengladbach to a giant in the summer, like many players who landed in a giant from a small club, hoping to have a bright future on a high platform, but the reality is the same as most people , He only got three chances to play in half a season. He has his own characteristics in offense, but he has no advantages in all aspects when competing with Van Bommel and Schweinsteiger, and he has not been reused by Van Gaal. He felt that he was still young, only twenty-two years old, and it was time to re-plan his future. It just so happened that Schalke came to him at this time. It was a good choice to return to his old club where he debuted to fight for the championship. The two sides hit it off quickly. Bayern did not have too much difficulty for a player who played a soy sauce role.

The two parties have already initialed the agreement, and they only need to wait another month, when the Bundesliga New Year's winter window officially opens and the transfer formalities will be formally announced to the outside world.

After the basic dust settled, Helter finally felt a little more relaxed.

Originally thought that outdated stars were easy to start, but it turned out that players trained by themselves were easier to talk about.

Everything is difficult at the beginning, Schalke's first pick in the winter window, this start is really not easy.