League Cup: 1. FC Nürnberg 2 - 4 Schalke 04

By: Jan | July 24th, 2007

Fabian Ernst celebrates It has been a good night for Schalke 04 - on and potentially off the pitch.

On the pitch they comfortably beat DFB Cup winners Nuremberg and reached the League Cup final. Nuremberg only stood a chance against them for the first 30 minutes, during which Robert Vittek even scored the lead for the Franconians (not Bavarians, as they are sometimes wrongly dubbed in the English press). But three assists by Kevin Kuranyi lead to three goals in seven minutes and Schalke had turned the match around just before half-time. Another 45 minutes later the match had ended 4-2 in Schalke’s favour. Overall the match was surprisingly unexciting, despite producing six goals. It somehow showed that the League Cup is still a Mickey Mouse tournament, even if it’s a financially very lucrative Mickey Mouse tournament. Probably the DFL should have organised the semis as a double feature in one stadium like they did with the quarter finals. There were only a bit over 25000 fans in the stadium in Nuremberg that night. The same match-up in the Bundesliga would produce a sell-out crowd.

Off the pitch sporting director Andreas Müller was happy to announce that they have basically reached an agreement with Stephen Appiah about his possible future with the Royal Blues. That doesn’t mean too much actually, as they have yet to meet Fenerbahce’s asking price, which supposedly has just been bumped to 10-12 million Euros. A bit too much to ask for from the financially troubled club. And then there is this Appiah who Müller thinks is so eager to join Schalke. At the same time this Appiah is said to have told The Sun: “West Ham have expressed strong interest in me and I think Fenerbahce will have to listen to their offer. It is my ambition to play in the Premier League.” Even Arsenal are said to be in the race for him now. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Schalke. I hope they get out of this whole saga with either their desired big name signing or at least without too much embarrassment.

And here comes the obligatory embedded YouTube match highlight video:

1-0 Robert Vittek (20th min.)
1-1 Levan Kobiashvili (38th min.)
1-2 Fabian Ernst (43rd min.)
1-3 Peter Lövenkrands (45th min.)
1-4 Heiko Westermann (59th min.)
2-4 Robert Vittek (73rd min.)