\n<\/p>\n
Raul’s debut season at Schalke may have started slowly, but by Christmas he’d already bagged two Bundesliga hat-tricks. Not everyone around him was playing quite so well, though, and Magath was relieved of his duties on March 16, because while Schalke were going well in Europe, they were struggling domestically. <\/span><\/p>\n In that sense, Magath’s successor, Ralf Rangnick, didn’t change much, as the team limped home in 14th place in the Bundesliga. But that was partly due to the fact that they focused almost exclusively on the cup competitions during the business end of the season – and with good cause. <\/span><\/p>\n Having topped a Champions League group containing Lyon and Benfica, Schalke defeated Valencia 4-2 on aggregate in the last 16, with Raul netting the crucial equaliser in the first-leg draw at Mestalla. What followed in the quarter-finals, though, was truly remarkable. <\/span><\/p>\n Inter may have endured a dreadful start to the season under Mourinho’s successor, Rafa Benitez, who was sacked just before Christmas, but the reigning champions had found their feet again under Leonardo and were heavy favourites going into their meeting with Schalke at San Siro. <\/span><\/p>\n However, Rangnick’s men ran riot in Milan. Despite trailing twice on the night, they triumphed 5-2 thanks to another vital goal from Raul, who scored the go-ahead goal shortly after half-time. The Spain icon also broke the deadlock in the return leg at the Veltins-Arena as Schalke won 2-1 to prevail 7-3 on aggregate.<\/span><\/p>\n “Raul scores in training, he scores in matches, he’s just an incredible player,” <\/span>Edu enthused.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Raul’s debut season at Schalke may have started slowly, but by Christmas he’d already bagged…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}