Arvid Schenk at Dundee – three months, one game, six goals conceded
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Version 0 of 1. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a case of veni, vidi, vici. Rather the contrary. Arvid Schenk came, he played one game … and conceded six goals. And then he left. The German goalkeeper’s brief tenure at Dundee last month is, in many ways, a very modern football tale. A free agent, having been released from St Pauli, the German was on the outlook of a new club during the January transfer window when the chance to join Dundee arose. After spending his whole career in Germany with Hansa Rostock and the Wolfsburg and St Pauli reserve teams the 25-year-old relished the chance of playing abroad. He signed a short-term deal with the Scottish club in October 2014 and two months later, on New Year’s Day, he was given his chance to shine. In the derby against Dundee United. Sadly, things did not go as Schenk or indeed Dundee had hoped. They were a goal down within a minute and ended up losing the game 6-2. It turned out to be Schenk’s only appearance for them. “It’s very simple,” he tells the Guardian. “We conceded the first goal after 31 seconds. Someone shot, the ball took a deflection off one of my team-mates and I went to the left and the ball went to the right. But then we got back into the game, we equalised and I played like I normally do. “After 20 minutes, though, we conceded again from one of the best goals I’ve seen in my whole career. If there was an angel in the penalty area it was with their player. I certainly didn’t have an angel with me and had no chance to stop that ball going in. And so it carried on.” Schenk admits that, as the goals went in, it hurt more and more, especially as it was a derby. “All goals that went in were very hard for me to take,” he says. “I’m from a club that play big derbies all the times, St Pauli in Hamburg, so I know how wrong it is to lose a derby and concede six goals. I kept telling myself: ‘Fuck! Just don’t concede another goal.’ For every goal that went in I thought about the club and the supporters that were losing a derby. That’s rubbish and I did really feel for them.” The German, whose debut was dubbed the worst ever on social media, is philosophical about the game, on the one hand agreeing that he cannot be without blame when his team lose 6-2 but on the other struggling to see what he could have done to prevent any of the goals. “I can’t say: ‘It’s not my fault’ after conceding six but I also don’t think I made a mistake that cost us a goal. A derby is like this: if you win you are a hero and we didn’t. But we have looked at what happened during the game, analysed the video and we saw that all the goals were caused by lost possession or defensive mistakes.” Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Schenk was back on the bench for the next game, a 1-1 draw against Ross County, but he insists that it was not because of his performance but rather because Scott Bain was fit again. “After the derby I didn’t play another game for the club. I came back and sat on the bench but for me that was OK because the first-choice goalkeeper came back and in my opinion he is one of the best in Scotland. Now one month has passed since that game and I have forgotten about it. I won’t forget the moment or the experience because it was my first game in the top flight in Scotland but I don’t go around thinking about it. It’s football, it is a day-to-day business. So, next game, next chance.” The goalkeeper is keen to stress that he was not fired by Dundee but that his contract ran out. “I did what the club wanted me to do in the sense that I stayed for the duration of my contract, which ended on 28 January. I am not angry with the club. No, no, no. Not at all. “The club were honest with me and explained why they signed me. I knew I was there to cover for Kyle Letheren, the Welsh goalkeeper who was injured. And I knew I was behind Scott Bain in the pecking order, just waiting for my moment. And my moment, when it came, was very hard because it was a derby and it went horribly wrong.” So what will Schenk do now? “I’m waiting for a new club: maybe I will stay in the UK or maybe I will travel back to Germany. I’m just waiting for a new offer. All in all it’s not a big story. If you watch the game maybe you can call it the worst derby display ever by a team but [the result] was not my fault. “I will continue to hold me head high. The next day will be a better day.” |