Chapter 920: A Storm is Coming!

It seemed that the game against Armenia Bielefeld, where Schalke gained their biggest win in a long time, somehow sucked all of their luck straight away. Just three days after the game was over, with them being so close at the final game of the season, another disaster struck.

Somehow, Goncalo Paciencia, in his foolishness back at the striker’s residence, got drunk with his family, and in his tipsy moment, he stubbed his toenail against the table, breaking it straight away.

Sounding silly, yeah, but the consequence was fatal.

The medical team looked so solemn when they checked up on the wound on Paciencia’s toe. In the end, they just gave the head coach a regretful head-shaking, telling the furious man that this was not something savable.

"At least, he has to take a rest for two to four weeks. He will not be able to wear the boots properly for a full week, so he will also be absent from the training session."

Frohling’s face was so dark when he heard that, and Paciencia, who was the culprit—and the victim as well, in this case—had to turn his head away to avoid the fury building inside his head coach’s head.

"For fuck’s sake... When we start to get a good result, why is it that something bad always follows?!" The man threw his hands up in frustration when he was alone with Tomasz Waldoch in the meeting room. "Now, we don’t have any pure striker, shit! How should we approach the next game?!"

Tomasz Waldoch just kept quiet for a moment, letting all the negative emotion explode on his boss first. The Polish man worked long enough with Torsten Frohling to know that in this moment, what the man asked was never an answer but someone who was willing to be there to listen to his rant.

Once he calmed down, though, Waldoch finally said, "Well, let’s look at the positive side here."

"There is a positive side?!" He turned his head quickly, sending his assistant a deadly glare.

Still, Waldoch didn’t even flinch, just crossing his arms in front of his chest calmly. "We are just one game away from the winter transfer session, so even if we sacrificed this game, it is just one occasion. We also want to buy a striker this winter, right? You can use this excuse to ask more money from the gaffer, if you are thick-skinned enough to do that."

Well, that was... A good suggestion.

Even Frohling himself felt his anger subside instantly after that, and he pondered over this possibility carefully. This was definitely a good reason to ask for more money to get a striker of better quality, something that the team lacked this season.

"Still, I don’t really want to let go of the next game, okay?" The head coach sighed unwillingly. "We have just come back from our biggest win of the season; this kind of momentum is not something that could come so easily. I want to at least end the year with one more win, damn! Is it so hard to ask?!" He sighed in annoyance.

Unlike the emotional Frohling, though, Waldoch had already thought of the solution. "Well, just for one game, we can put Beni on the focal point again, or if you still insist on a pure striker, asking Hunter just for this one might not be that bad." The Polish assistant offered his suggestion.

Another good piece of advice from Waldoch!

This was the reason why Frohling appreciated his assistant here. The man was always willing to deal with his nonsense when his emotions went south, and after he recovered, the man’s logical thinking would always be able to provide the best solution for the team.

The two names that Waldoch threw here were also good possibilities. After all, Klass-Jan Huntelaar was still on the team even though he hadn’t played a single game yet, while Benito Raman had experience playing as a sole striker before he switched into a pure winger.

Still, the man didn’t agree with that immediately. No, he frowned a little bit before shaking his head, showing that he didn’t like the idea.

"Hunter has been working well as an assistant, and his training portion has declined a lot at this point, so he will not be ready for the next game. As for Beni... He has been doing well on the right side, so putting him back to the center can break his concentration, and it would definitely affect his performance. No, he has to stay there and support us from the right flank."

Waldoch just nodded quietly, understanding where his boss came from. Still, he was so helpless right now, as all of his suggestions were rejected by the man. This didn’t leave the team too much of an option here, especially since they were just two days away from the next game.

"Well, if we have no other option, you can just ask for the second team to lend their striker, right? I mean, it is just for one game, and who knows, maybe we can find a little surprise just like how Higo emerged from that team."

Frohling just sighed, clearly showing that he didn’t like the solution. Unfortunately, the situation was not ideal right now, so he had to adapt to what we had in the team.

Of course, with him being in such a foul mood, the one who suffered from it was the whole team. Somehow, a simple training session suddenly became so intense as they were forced to work harder again, getting punished more for the littlest mistake that happened in the game.

"Damn! Did the boss wake up on the wrong side of his pillow or what?!" Stambouli groaned as he had done another set of push-up for his mistake that he made. "I swear to God, if he pushes it too far, I will go berserk here!"

Some of the youngsters also nodded while grunting when they were doing their punishment, clearly supporting the idea here.

Higo himself was just quiet, finding the situation on the coaching staff to be quite somber. Even though he didn’t know what happened, the boy could see that a problem was looming, and he had guts that he would not like what it would be.

’Oh, man... Please, let us finish this year peacefully...’