Shkodran Mustafi’s comical own goal proved to be an insult to injury, as Schalke succumbed to an embarrassing 5-0 loss to Wolfsburg in their Bundesliga outing tonight. The German centre back put the ball into his own net to kick off the demolition on the night, in a moment that has since gone viral amongst the football fraternity online. The video seemed to particularly interest some thankful Arsenal fans who expressed their gratitude to the Gelsenkirchen outfit for helping them offload the central defender infamously known for moments like that.
Mustafi opened the scoring for the opposition just past the half hour mark tonight, when the home side worked the ball into the penalty area in the hope of getting an effort on target – but as a defender’s clearance looped up into the air, Mustafi opted to head it back towards his own goal when in a fair amount of space and under no particular pressure from opponents.
Mustafi caught goalkeeper Frederik Ronnow by surprise, who had no chance in preventing the ball from going into the back of the net despite scrambling hurriedly to his right. The gift of a goal handed Wolfsburg the necessary momentum to try and cement a result, which is exactly what they did as they scored four more times to compound Schalke’s misery.
Mustafi made a reputation for himself with a plethora of such unfortunate schoolboy errors in his time at Arsenal, a four and a half year-long tenure that featured 151 appearances and ended when he reached an agreement with the North London club to mutually terminate his contract.
Mustafi went on to join Schalke on a permanent transfer – but his moments of madness are not a thing of the distant past as seen from tonight’s own goal. A lot of the Arsenal fans on Twitter expressed their relief and gratitude to Schalke for helping them deal with a chunk of their deadwood, while some even hoped for Schalke’s improbable survival in the Bundesliga – the team are currently rock bottom with 10 points – just so they can also offload Sead Kolasinac to them.
Check out the reactions below –
Dear Schalke,
Thank you for taking Mustafi from us, you are real life heroes. We hope you don’t get relegated so you can take Kolasinac too.
If you’re ever feeling bad about yourself, or the wrong decisions you’ve taken in life, remember that Schalke signed Mustafi when they were in a relegation battle. 😭
Just watched the Schalke highlights. Jesus wept. I hope #Mustafi made it home alright. He had a shocker. With that type of form he’s probably wandering around lost in Berlin atm #S04
