Raúl Scores Brace As Schalke 04 Beat St. Pauli

Schalke 04 3 (Raúl 14’, Huntelaar 54’, Raúl 81’) - St. Pauli 0

Schalke 04 recorded their first home win of the Bundesliga campaign with a three-nil victory over St. Pauli in the opening match of Week 11. Two strikes from Raúl sandwiched a Klaas-Jan Huntelaar goal in Die Königsblauen’s biggest win of the season, and the victory moves S04 from joint-bottom into fifteenth place.

The hosts came into the match off the back of a one-nil defeat to Bayer Leverkusen last weekend and a disappointing draw to Hapoel Tel Aviv in the Champions league. Schalke had recorded just a single goal in three hundred sixty minutes of football and didn’t look particularly dangerous in the early exchanges, but took the lead with their first good chance of the match. Jefferson Farfan found the overlapping Astuto Uchida, who drilled his low cross across the face of goal, evading Huntelaar at the near post, setting up Raúl to tap in from three yards out.

The hosts were certainly the more threatening of the two sides, but both played fairly poorly on the evening. St. Pauli had a few chances to equalize as Deniz Naki missed one good opportunity after a nice ball in from Fabian Boll and Dennis Daube’s free-kick late in the first half flew just wide of the post. After the interval, Schalke were in almost total control - St. Pauli didn’t have a shot in the second half and Manuel Neuer didn’t have to make a single save. Huntelaar grabbed Schalke’s second with a near post header from a corner kick by Farfan in the fifty-fourth minute, and Raúl wrapped up the win with another tap in after a goal-line scramble with just nine minutes to play. Farfan nearly caught out St. Pauli again on the counterattack in the waning minutes, but three goals proved to be more than enough as Schalke picked up their second clean sheet of the season.