Still deep in the catacombs of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin last Saturday, Petri Pasanen had Barcelona on his mind. “Maybe Barca will give Schalke plenty of running to do on that big pitch over there”, grinned the Finnish international as he explained his hopes for the Wednesday evening Champions League quarter final tie in Spain. If that should be the case, then Werder’s opponents will be pretty exhausted when they come to the Weser for the Bundesliga clash this weekend.
Torsten Frings on the other hand, doesn’t wish to pay too much attention to Schalke’s Spanish journey. The vice-captain cast his mind back to the number of packed weeks the Green-Whites had to battle through and stated: “We were at a disadvantage ourselves often enough and still put on good performances. That won’t be the decisive factor here.”
Trainer Thomas Schaaf is awaiting a strong Schalke team: “They won’t be coming here to hide out. They’ll try to play attacking football. Schalke is a side that plays in a very compact manner and have a distinct amount of aggression in their game. They wait for their opponents to make mistakes in the midfield, react to that quickly and capitalise on them.”
The last nine meetings of the two (including DFB and League Cup clashes) have not exactly gone to plan for the Green-Whites, who are now nine games without a win over S04. The last win was a 1:0 in the 2004/2005 season opener, when a power failure cast the stadium into darkness for over an hour before the game could be started. On the whole though, Schalke are quite welcome guests in Bremen with the ‘Royal Blues’ having only won eight of their 38 trips to face Werder. Now that could be a good sign!
source: werder.de
