Schalke 04 suspend Harit and Bentaleb, terminate Vedad Ibisevic's contract
Vedad Ibisevic's contract with Schalke 04 will be terminated at the end of the year. Meanwhile, Amine Harit and Nabil Bentaleb have been suspended from team training at the struggling Bundesliga club.
| Amine Harit. | Photo: Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
The veteran striker joined Schalke on a one-year deal last summer, but his spell will be cut short, the crisis-hit Bundesliga club said on Tuesday.
"We need to treat each case on an individual basis. Both we and Vedad had expected his time at the club to take a different path. From our perspective, it makes sense to end our cooperation and to leave on good terms. I've known Vedad for several years, both as a person and as a player. Unfortunately, Schalke hasn't proven to be the right fit that we had promised each other," said Schalke 04 head of sport Jochen Schneider.
Ibisevic was involved in a training bust-up with assistant coach Naldo last week, but the termination of the 36-year-old's contract has nothing to do with his recent 'emotional outburst,' insists Schneider.
"I would like to make it clear that this decision has nothing to do with the emotional outburst in training last Sunday – that's something that can happen in football."
In the same statement, the Gelsenkirchen club also announced that Amine Harit and Nabil Bentaleb have been suspended from team training for disciplinary reasons. Both players will train individually until further notice.
"There were some things that happened last weekend which we were not okay with. That's why Amine has been given time to think," said Jochen Schneider.
"He has a lot of potential as a player, but hasn't been able to bring that to the team over the last few months. We will leave him on his own, but will do everything we can to get him to where he is able to use his talent to help the club. It's now up to Amine to find him way back into the team," he added.
As for the decision to suspend Bentaleb, who has clashed with the club in the past, Schneider said:
"There's no question that he's a great footballer. But, we have established that Schalke and Nabil Bentaleb clearly aren't a good fit. There's nothing in this moment that has led to this, but rather, it was part of a process. We will part ways by summer 2021 at the latest."