1899 finishes year with style

1899 looks ahead to next season with great hope as the finished the year with a 3-2 victory over Schalke 04. With the victory, Ralf Rangnick's side extend their unbeaten string to four and finish seventh in the table. While there is naturally some sadness over the falling fortunes in the Rückrunde, overall the long term growth of the club looks highly promising.

Of particular importance was the inclusion of Boris Vukčević,Isaac Vorsah and Pascal Groß in Herr Rangnick's starting eleven. At the ages of 19, 20 and 17, each showed very well and promise to be a part of the clubs future. 1899 opened the scoring twenty-six minutes in as Carlos Eduardo flew down the left channel before crossing to Demba Ba to redirect in from the six-yard box. The match was evened only four minutes later as Ivan Rakitić's corner from the right was headed in by Mladen Krstajić at the near post. Schalke took the lead at the thirty-fourth minute as Benedikt Höwedes came right side of the box and just before Isaac Vorsah could reach him he crossed to Jefferson Farfán to finish from five metres. After the break nineteen year-old Fabrício entered the match for Groß and did well for his claim for the club to seek out his contract from Flamengo. Four minutes into the half Carlos Eduardo evened up the match with a perfect free-kick over the wall and into the top left corner from (hmm) around twenty metres. With only a minute remaining Coritiba product Rafinha brought down his countryman Fabrício in the area with the spot pointed to. Carlos Eduardo stepped up and capped the end of the season perfectly driving the ball into the net.