18th October, 2014
Roberto di Matteo got off to a winning start as Schalke 04 coach when the Royal Blues picked up only their third win of the season with a 2-0 victory at home to Hertha Berlin.
Netherlands striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar put Schalke ahead with a long-range header on 19 minutes before Germany midfielder Julian Draxler made it 2-0 with a well-taken goal on 65 minutes.
The result lifts Schalke to eighth as di Matteo, who won the 2012 Champions League title with Chelsea, replaced sacked predecessor Jens Keller a fortnight ago.
The Royal Blues, second in Group G behind Chelsea, host Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, Borussia Dortmund’s horror league run continued as they lost 2-1 at Cologne to go five Bundesliga games without a win and suffer three defeats in a row, ahead of Wednesday’s Champions League clash at Galatasaray.
“We played a type of football which makes absolutely no sense,” fumed Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp.
Cologne took a 1-0 lead as midfielder Kevin Vogt fired home on 40 minutes.
Although Dortmund striker Ciro Immobile equalised, Simon Zoller netted Cologne’s winner on 74 minutes to seal their first home victory against Borussia since 2003.
The result leaves Dortmund 14th — just two points above the bottom three — while Cologne are 11th.
Bayer Leverkusen, who host Zenit St Petersburg in the Champions League on Wednesday, threw away a three-goal lead in their 3-3 draw at plucky VfB Stuttgart.
A win would have seen Leverkusen go third, but the draw saw them drop to sixth in the table.
Leverkusen raced into a 2-0 lead after only nine minutes as South Korea’s Son Heung-Min scored twice and could have had a hat-trick on 11 minutes when his lob hit the crossbar before Germany’s Karim Bellarabi made it 3-0 at the break.
But Stuttgart battled back as midfielder Timo Werner and left-back Florian Klein scored second-half goals before Martin Harnik headed Stuttgart level on 76 minutes when he was left unmarked at the far post — by Son.
VfL Wolfsburg went third with a 2-1 win at Freiburg as midfielder Daniel Caligiuri scored twice against his old club, while Mainz went fourth after their 2-1 win at home to Augsburg.