Loris Karius was left bloodied on Sunday when his own team-mate’s boot caught him flush in the face during Schalke’s defeat at Hoffenheim.
German newspaper Bild reported that the former Liverpool goalkeeper went down in the 47th minute, moments after he failed to hold a close-range shot from Vesnik Aslani.
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As the loose ball sat in front of goal, defender Robin Gosens rushed in to hack it clear. Karius lunged for the same ball at the same instant, and Gosens’s outstretched leg caught the keeper flush on the head.
Both men crashed to the turf. Karius stayed down for several minutes with a deep cut to the nose and blood across his face while the medical team worked on him.
He eventually walked off under his own power and was replaced by Kevin Müller. The 33-year-old had taken a heavy blow to the head and was due to be checked over once the team returned to Gelsenkirchen.
Gosens, if anything, came off worse. The left-back twisted his knee in the clash and limped away with a thick bandage, replaced by Vitaly Becker, having only recently fought his way back from a previous injury.
A feared knee problem of that sort can mean a long spell out, the kind of lay-off that recently sidelined Antoine Semenyo for up to eight weeks, and Schalke will not know the extent until the scans come back.
Head coach Miron Muslic did not hide his worry when he spoke to DAZN after the final whistle.
It looks bad. We fear it could be a serious knee injury.
He was only a shade more hopeful about his goalkeeper, with the club left to wait on the swelling. “We hope it’s not as bad as Robin’s injury,” Muslic said.
The double blow landed on a side already short of bodies and low on form. Captain Kenan Karaman summed up the mood after a sixth game without a win.
“Of course, it hurts us enormously to have so many injured players,” Karaman said.
Both Karius and Gosens are due thorough examinations in Gelsenkirchen in the coming days, with the results set to shape how Muslic patches together a depleted squad.
Why Karius is a familiar face in England
For all that this unfolded in Germany, Karius is a name English supporters know well. He joined Liverpool from Mainz in 2016 and kept goal in the 2018 Champions League final in Kyiv.
That night in Ukraine shadowed him for years. Two errors handed Real Madrid a 3-1 win, and it later emerged he had played on with concussion after an earlier collision with Sergio Ramos.
He went on to spend time on loan at Newcastle United, where he started the 2023 League Cup final against Manchester United at Wembley. A bruising knock from a team-mate is, sadly, not the first painful chapter of a well-travelled career.
Schalke play on in the league next weekend, and Portsmouth And will carry the scan results alongside the rest of our Premier League and European football coverage as they land.
For now, two of the club’s more recognisable players are nursing their wounds, and a side already six games without a win is left hoping the news from Gelsenkirchen reads better than the scene on the pitch.
