Schalke 04 reached the quarter-finals of the DFB Cup for the fourth time in a row with a furious race to catch up and once again ended Hertha BSC’s dreams of reaching the final early – Schalke coach David Wagner saw a red card in the fiery extra time. Despite trailing 0:2, his team beat the unusually aggressive Berliners 3:2 (2:2, 0:2) after 120 minutes.
Daniel Caligiuri (76.), Amine Harit (82.) and substitute Benito Raman (115.) secured the Gelsenkirchen team a place in the last eight. Pascal Köpke (12) and the winter entry Krzystof Piatek (39) had put the Berliners in the lead.
Four days after the 0:0 in the Bundesliga duel, Hertha coach Jürgen Klinsmann not only surprised his opponent Wagner with a courageous, offensive tactic, after having focused primarily on defense in his first weeks on the Berliner Bank. The Royal Blues only found a recipe late in the second half.
Both coaches had started the rotary machine. Compared to last Friday’s game, they exchanged a total of nine players. At Hertha, Piatek made his debut in the starting eleven, and at Schalke, the Barcelona loaner Jean-Clair Todibo, who, however, had already been replaced at half-time.
The Berliners, who had previously scored only seven goals in eight games under Klinsmann, played courageously from the outset. After Marius Wolf narrowly missed the goal, Köpke used his cross to take the lead. The royal blues reacted promptly: Torunarigha scraped the ball off the line after a shot from Harit (14th), seconds later the Moroccan failed to score against Hertha keeper Rune Jarstein.