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While most eyes in the footballing world are fixated on North London’s tussle for fourth place in the Premier League, a far more unlikely battle for Champions League football is occurring across the Channel.
In the final round of Bundesliga fixtures taking place this weekend, Jens Keller’s Schalke travel to fifth-placed Freiburg with their season on the line.
Having sat as low as tenth in February despite occupying second place for a number of weeks earlier in the season, the likes of Julian Draxler and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar turned out a series of match-winning performances to surge back into the top four.
However, when expected to seal their place in next season’s Champions League playoff round last weekend against Stuttgart, “die Königsblauen” fluffed their lines in front of their own fans in a shock 2-1 defeat.
With that result, the door was left ajar for Freiburg and they duly delivered, scoring two late goals against relegated Greuther Furth to secure a 2-1 victory of their own and cut the gap between fourth and fifth to a single point.
So in a coincidence that the fixture makers would not have dreamed of when putting the list together, the two sides meet at the Mage Solar Stadium on Saturday to ultimately decide which side gets the chance to play in the lucrative Champions League group stage.
Mathematically speaking, sixth-placed Eintracht Frankfurt are still able to sneak in, but they would need to beat Borussia Dortmund, one of this season’s Champions League finalist, by a margin of five goals in addition to Freiburg and Schalke cancelling each other out in a draw.
The home side would have confidence in nullifying Schalke’s array of talented footballers: their defence is ranked as the league’s second best despite the relative inexperience of keeper Oliver Baumann and key defenders Mathias Ginter and Oliver Sorg who are all under the age of 23.
At the other end of the field, striker Max Kruse is enjoying the best season of his career, having scored in the victory over Furth last weekend.
The 25-year-old will fancy his chances at repeating the feat this weekend, with Schalke’s defence looking to be an increasingly weak point ever since the departure of inspirational keeper Manuel Neuer two seasons ago.
There are a number of parallels between this side and last season’s surprise packet, Borussia Mönchengladbach.
Both were rescued from the drop by mid-season managerial changes before making European challenges in the following campaign.
Led by the brilliant Marco Reus and backed by one of the league’s strongest defences, Gladbach snuck into fourth ahead of pre-season favourite Bayer Leverkusen and earned themselves a Champions League playoff.
Unfortunately though, their success proved to be their downfall. Reus was sold to Dortmund for a club-record 17 million euros and defensive stalwarts Dante and Roman Neustadter departed to Bayern Munich and Schalke.
With the core of their side removed and rebuilt in the summer transfer window, the transition was too much and they bowed out in their playoff to Dynamo Kiev 4-3 on aggregate. Lucien Favre’s side will only be able to finish as high as seventh in an ultimately disappointing campaign.
History seems set to repeat itself in Freiburg, with midfielder Jan Rosenthal already agreeing terms with Frankfurt, Kruse becoming the next player to fill the Reus-shaped hole in Gladbach’s starting eleven, and the rest of the club’s young stars being linked with a number of clubs.
So will Freiburg ‘do a Gladbach’? Perhaps they already have.
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