If one goalkeeper was going to dominate the discussion in this game, it actually felt as if it would be the less busy one. Schalke fans do not take kindly to being dumped and even if Manuel Neuer left the club behind 15 years ago – and even if most of the world associates him with Bayern Munich rather than his home town club – he is still given a rough ride when he returns. Opposing sporting directors Max Eberl and Frank Baumann had their words to say about that after Saturday evening’s latest visit, but it wasn’t Germany’s legendary goalkeeper who took the headlines – or not he alone, at least.
It was always going to be a landmark afternoon with Schalke playing a first home game in the top flight since May 2023, but this was way beyond what anyone could have expected. The numbers said it all – with Bayern failing to score for the first time domestically since a goalless draw at Leverkusen more than 18 months ago, meaning they finished the weekend not on top of the table for the first time in almost two years – but told nothing of the story. For at the end of this goalless draw, the story was Loris Karius.
A goalkeeper who, once upon a time, might have hoped to back up Neuer in the national team on the rare occasions that the totem was indisposed, but whose career has become about attrition rather than aspiration. At 33, this was a day in the sun that seemed like it would never come. Little was expected of Miron Muslić’s team here, with damage limitation and a swift moving onto more winnable battles perhaps the realistic aim, with last week’s 3-0 loss at Augsburg (a bright start followed by a frank reality check) indicative of the task facing them back at the top table.
Little has been expected of Karius for a long time, going all the way back to what turned out to be his final Liverpool appearance, the error-strewn Champions League final against Real Madrid in Kyiv in 2018. By the time we learned that Karius’s mistakes were likely conditioned by a concussion suffered earlier in the game, the die had been cast and the damage to his reputation done. You may know some of the tale since.
A move to Besiktas which ran aground when he was forced to take action against the club (twice) for unpaid wages. Another loan to Union Berlin which led to just four Bundesliga appearances – the only league games, mind you, that he would play between leaving Istanbul in May 2020 and being drafted in late to Newcastle’s lineup against Arsenal in February 2024 after Martin Dubravka fell ill on the day of the game. A year before he had been brought in to cover for the suspended Nick Pope in the Carabao Cup final, his first first-team game in two years, and performed creditably.
If the journey has been confusing to us, imagine what it was like for Karius. I even considered ending my career, but I was only 25 years old and couldn’t just stay home.” When he joined Schalke in January 2025 it was six months after his Newcastle deal ended, and then-coach Kees van Wonderen made it clear Karius was signing as second choice. Yet by February he had made the starting spot his own – before picking up a calf injury four games in that forced him to miss the rest of the season.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
