On Saturday, FC Bayern will play an away game against FC Schalke 04 in the evening match of the Bundesliga. The Royal Blues suffered an away loss in Augsburg in their return to Germany’s top division.
The fact that the record champions are coming to Gelsenkirchen on the very second matchday isn’t ideal for the Royal Blues. Schalke wants to—and must—try to perform well in this matchup and raise their game.
“We can learn a lot from those 90 minutes. The Bundesliga simply demands a different level of alertness at all times,” said Miron Muslic, Schalke’s coach, after the first game of the new season.
Muslic’s statement is turning heads
However, the coach of the newly promoted team refuses to accept that the upcoming match against the record champions could be a problem. “No. Fatal? It’s Matchday 2,” Muslic responded after the Augsburg game.
In any case, the coach of Bayern’s next league opponent was in good spirits after the Matchday 1 game. And he even shared a little anecdote. Before the game, he had met the “son” of FCA coach Manuel Baum, who had been in Munich with his father on Friday to watch Bayern’s 5-1 win over Stuttgart.
“I told him then that I’m a 60s fan. So in that sense, I made sure things were clear before the game,” Muslic said with a smile.
A statement that certainly won’t go over too well with FC Bayern, even if it was meant as a joke.
Meanwhile, Muslic set the tone for the upcoming challenges, including the match against FC Bayern: “The team is eager to learn. Our team is eager to develop. We know the next ten months will be brutally intense; they’ll be really demanding. But we’re prepared for that, too.”