What exactly is the point of Stuttgart?
The Swabian club find themselves staring relegation in the face, following some uninspiring appointments and a fanciful approach to the transfer market.
In a packed Veltins-Arena on Saturday, there was really only one team determined to win the game and begin the long road to redemption. In what had accurately been described as a relegation “six-pointer”, Schalke played host to Stuttgart in a match they surely had to win if they had any hope of clawing themselves off the bottom of the league table. And that’s exactly what they did.
This game had everything. End-to-end football, drama throughout the 90 minutes, great goals and a loud, energetic Gelsenkirchen crowd that had been ravenously waiting for any glimmer of hope to cling on to. When Dominick Drexler got on to the end of Michael Frey’s cross in the tenth minute to head home the opening goal, the Schalke faithful began to dream. When Marius Bulter’s wonderful back-heeled shot made it 2-0 thirty minutes later, they began to believe.
Stuttgart certainly had their chances throughout the match and even pulled a goal back following a howler from Ralf Fahrmann just after the 62nd minute, but it was undoubtedly a game in which the Swabian side failed to match the occasion and were second best throughout the match and across the pitch. "We are extremely disappointed because a lot more could have been done here,” noted a dejected Bruno Labbadia at full-time. "We just didn't have the courage in the first half. That's always the problem with such a young team - and we're the youngest - we know that."
Indeed, while Schalke look like a team with purpose and a club that is - finally - working together to achieve a goal, Stuttgart in stark contrast continue to embody the very worst tendencies of the Bundesliga. And in many ways, resemble a club that doesn't exactly know what they stand for or where they really ought to be going.
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