Schalke 04’s Transfer Troubles

By: Jan | July 20th, 2007

Kuranyi - Appiah - Riquelme Schalke 04 has been operating on the edge financially in recent years, and pulled off some stunts to ensure liquidity and obtain a license from the DFL (German Football League). The club lived beyond its means during the Rudi Assauer era, which saw Schalke building their impressive new stadium and a competitive squad. But they were also generating net losses between €10m to €20m.

The club has to consolidate its finances. Last year the management admitted that they need to play constantly in the Champions League to earn the necessary money to do so. Not really a fail safe way of budgeting considering that the fluctuation of clubs who reach the Champions League (minus Bayern Munich) has been quite high in the Bundesliga in recent years. Then there is the new massive sponsorship deal with Gazprom that secures Schalke something around €20m per season. Money that helped a lot to stabilise the financial situation, but it also wet the appetite of people, who would like to see some big name signings and clubs who decided to up their asking price for a player respectively, as sporting director Andreas Müller complained.

To save money Schalke invested a total of €0 for new players last season. They completely relied on free transfers and had to compensate for the departure of a high profile player like Christian Poulsen at the same time. During the season Schalke also had to deal with numerous long term injuries of players. They nevertheless came close to winning the league.

Schalke continued to keep a low profile on the transfer market this year while Bayern Munich started their spending spree. In interviews coach Mirko Slomka wasn’t too worried that his squad might not be able to compete with a completely rebuild Bayern Munich. The name Stephen Appiah had already been on the menu at that point, but it was also decided that Schalke wouldn’t risk performing any further financial stunts to meet his salary demands as well as Fenerbahce’s asking price. The whole issue became more pressing when Brazilian playmaker Lincoln left the club for €5m to join Galatasaray Istanbul.

Players within the squad grew nervous and Kevin Kuranyi decided to publicly criticise the management’s cautious transfer politics. Not surprisingly sporting director Andreas Müller and president Josef Schnusenberg fired back at him. But Kuranyi had the backing of some of his team mates including captain Marcelo Bordon, who voiced his concerns a bit more diplomatically. Meanwhile Stephen Appiah kept speculations alive by reassuring every party involved, that they are the ones leading the race for him. That means he has no intentions of leaving Istanbul, he is extremely interested to join Schalke and he wants to move to Britain so his children can receive a proper education. At the same time Schalke kept their official stance that the case was closed.

Another name that was then linked with Schalke was Juan Roman Riquelme. Which just means Schalke was one of many European clubs who raised some eyebrows following Riquelme’s Copa America and previous Boca Juniors performances. And it didn’t come as much of a surprise, when Schalke announced that they had officially backed out of the race for Riquelme a few days go. If they struggle to meet Appiah’s demands, it should be even more difficult for them to compete with other European top clubs for the Argentinian playmaker.

In an interesting twist to Schalke’s efforts to sign Appiah, Fenerbahce on the other hand launched a bid to sign Kevin Kuranyi. No details are known officially, except for the fact that there is an interest and that Schalke proclaimed that he is absolutely not for sale. The mildly unreliable tabloid Bild reported about some obscene amounts of money that should lure another Schalke key player to Turkey. According to them Kuranyi would earn €40m over four years of which he would receive €32m in advance, while Schalke would be paid a solid transfer fee of €15m. Although unless Fenerbahce has a rich Berlusconi’esque benefactor, it can be doubted that they can actually afford to pay that much, so those numbers should probably be filed under fake. According to Skysport.com though Fenerbahce’s interest for Kuranyi might be intertwined with Schalke’s hopes to sign Appiah ie, Kuranyi to Istanbul and Appiah to Schalke. The same article also claims that Schalke made a fresh bid for Appiah. President Schnusenberg just remarked that they won’t comment on the whole issue any longer.

As it stands now, Schalke needs to sign Appiah to attenuate concerns within their own squad and possibly within parts of their fanbase. At the same time Schalke needs to take a look at their salary structure and keep it balanced throughout the team. And they can’t really pay too much for his transfer fee without putting further strains on their finances. The Bundesliga will definitely benefit from his signing. But it might only be a short term benefit if financial troubles would force Schalke to sell portions of their squad in the coming seasons (see: Borussia Dortmund).