Chapter 731: The Beginning of a Long Drought

Unlike any other country in Europe, Germany was probably the only one that had a weak capital city team. If London had so many great teams, Paris had PSG, and even Rome had AS Roma and Lazio, all this city had was just Hertha Berlin and Union Berlin, two mediocre teams that always tried to fight to avoid the relegation zone almost every year.

The best one here was Hertha Berlin, the team that Schalke would face in the next Bundesliga fixture. This was the best team that the capital could offer, and it wasn’t really that much. Hell, their best achievement was winning the league twice, but they did that in 1930, around 80 years ago.

That definitely couldn’t be used as a metric to measure how good the team was.

In the last couple of years, they also couldn’t find consistency. Sometimes, they would have a good season and finish around 6th or 7th place, but in the next year, their performance would fall instantly to the relegation zone, forcing them to fight from Bundesliga 2 once again. This showed just how bad they were.

This also reflected in the atmosphere in the stadium, as even though this Olympia Stadion was one of the biggest in the country, only half of it was filled with people.Not only that, the noise only came from one side of the stand where the fanatic supporters gathered, while the other sides were just dead quiet.

It was as if they were here just for fun, not expecting anything else.

"Oh, we cannot really complain, you know?" Oczipka let out a helpless sigh. "Just a few months ago, we were still in the same shoes as them. It is just pure luck that we have Higo right now, or our reputation would only plummet further among the supporters." He grinned while punching the goalkeeper on his shoulder lightly.

"Result-wise, yes, we were in the same shoes as them. But if you talked about the atmosphere, I couldn’t agree with that, Bastian." Fabian shook his head quickly. "Even though our supporters are harsh and demand a lot, they would still come and occupy every single corner of the stadium enthusiastically. We are still the team with the highest occupancy rate in the league, beating the fucking Dortmund itself, you know?"

Yeah, that was the craziest part here. A team that was fighting for the relegation zone managed to sell almost every single ticket for their home game, beating even the top two teams in the country. This showed how passionate Schalke fans were about this team.

"Anyway, let’s not pity our opponent too much." Omar Mascarell interrupted while tucking his jersey neatly. "This is one of the games where we have to win, so strikers, get ready to work hard. You too, Morita-kun, don’t you dare slack off today." He sent a quick glance at the Japanese midfielder who was still warming up lazily.

"Don’t worry, Omar-san, I will try my hardest to give everyone an easy chance." Morita grinned.

The Spaniard looked at his partner in the midfield one more time before nodding quietly in approval, finding that Morita was indeed ready to face the game.

Soon enough, all the players from both teams finally came out of the tunnel, ready to start the game. For Schalke’s side, two changes were made, as two of their best players finally managed to return from injury.

Those were none other than Omar Mascarell, the team’s captain, and Benito Raman, Belgium’s right winger, who was also the team’s top assister before Morita took over everything in the midfield. Those two had been absent for quite a long time, and their return to the team was enough to make the rest of the team excited.

Then, the moment the game began, Morita went on fire, wanting to fulfill his promise beforehand. The boy moved so agilely in the midfield, controlling the tempo and sending the ball all over the place. His through passes were always decisive and dangerous, giving Schalke so many chances in this game.

Unfortunately, not a single one of the strikers managed to capitalize on the chances for them.It was always either they couldn’t react in time to get the best angle from Morita’s pass, their finishing was lacking, or even the opponent’s defenders who were always able to shut them down before they could take a shot from their position.

Hell, even some long-range attempts also failed to find the back of the net. It was as if someone cursed them for this day, not letting the ball get into the back of the net even just once.

The only fortunate part here was that Hertha Berlin didn’t put too much effort into their frontline. It seemed that they didn’t really want to win today’s game, just shooting casually from time to time to stack their statistics.

As a result, Higo also didn’t need to work that much, just making sure that no one could take advantage if the defensive system that protected him suddenly got a leak. After fighting tooth and nail against Bayern, for the boy, this was basically a vacation, a walk in the park.

’Yeah, who would expect that I would have this kind of a game in the real Bundesliga? It is as if this is just a prefectural tournament against a small team in Sapporo, right?’ The boy laughed wryly.

Still, at the end of the day, this was a boring game. Poor supporters; they came here expecting entertainment, but what they got was just a bunch of adults playing clumsy football without being able to find the back of the net.

It was a game that was a shame for any eyes to see. In the end, no one was able to score a single goal here, resulting in a draw between two bottom-tier teams in the Bundesliga. This also made Schalke’s position shaky for a moment as they moved down one spot, getting overtaken by FC Augsburg, which won against the worst team in the league so far, SC Paderborn.

Unfortunately, though, Schalke’s drought was still far from over, as this was just the beginning of their disastrous month.