Hello, Saints fan from Germany here. I thought I could give you a few information about Goretzka and Schalke in general. I don't particularly like Schalke so I don't really follow him either but I think I could clear up a few things I read in this thread
- Goretzka IS a great player and I think he would be an amazing addition to our team. His technical abilties are amazing, his passing is great too. I think he has played on the wing a few times but his main position is central midfield, really.
- He is considered a huge talent in Germany. When he was still playing at Bochum, a lot of clubs wanted to sign him, basically all big Bundesliga clubs and a few international clubs too. There were always a lot of scouts at the Bochum games because of him. In the end, Goretzka chose to go to Schalke and it was condsidered to be a pretty good deal for them.
- Injuries: Goretzka missed the first half of last season and quite a bit of the second half because of injuries, that's why he only got 10 appearances. I obviously don't know if he actually is injury prone but I would blame it at least to a certain part to the Schalke medical team. I think they are the club with the most injured players in Germany and I don't believe that it's just bad luck if a third of the squad is basically always injured.
- national team: He played for the senior team once in a friendly last spring but I wouldn't read too much into that. Löw basically started nothing but U21 players that he wanted to test for future use in that match.
- Bild: It's definitely NOT a high quality newspaper, although I think their football articles are not as bad as the rest. It's usually not really the information itself but the way they write about it that's kind problematic. Like in this article about Goretzka, the general tone is something like 'BPL club wants to buy another Bundesliga player because they have so much money and they just can do that to us.' In Germany, people are starting to be more and more worried about the financial power of the BPL and Bild knows that writing about something like this is a good way to get attention. I don't really think they just invented this rumour but I do think they're exagerating it. Just because we made a bit doesn't mean that this transfer has to go through after all.
- Now, like I said, I think Goretzka would be a great signing for us but unfortunately can't see this actually happening. Schalke just has no reason to sell him. They don't have a lot of debts so they don't need to sell players to get money. Their squad is pretty strong the way it is right now so they don't need money to spend on other players either. Plus, most importantly, the fan's wouldn't like if Schalke sold Goretzka because he's young and good and people are putting hope into him. And Schalke's sporting director Horst Heldt is REALLY eager to get the fans behind his back after last season. The fans were so ****ed off then because of the way the team played and about Heldt's decisions and a lot of other stuff that they refused to sing and support the team in the stadium. Heldt was really, really close to being fired and he's been working very hard this summer to get back on tracks. Selling Goretzka would certainly not help him with that.
- I've gotta say that I don't see much reason for him to force a transfer to us either. Schalke is a top 5 team in Germany, with a lot of supporters and even though the only play EL this year, their chances to get into the CL in the future are definitely higher than ours. Money shouldn't really be a problem, Schalke is one of the best paying team (except for Bayern of course). If he's actually fit there's a pretty high he'll get quite a lot of starts too.
