Karius Blunder, a Bloody Collision and a 500-Minute Drought: Hoffenheim Edge Schalke 2-1

Some goals are crafted. Some are gifted. And some arrive in a blur of chaos that nobody on the pitch quite believes. Fisnik Asllani's opener on Sunday belonged firmly in the third category, and it set the tone for a strange, bruising evening in Sinsheim that Hoffenheim eventually won 2-1 — though the scoreline barely tells half the story.

Ten minutes in, Schalke goalkeeper Loris Karius took a back pass and tried to play his way out of trouble, as modern goalkeepers are told to do. He never got the chance. Asllani charged him down, the clearance cannoned off the striker, and the ball looped over the stranded Karius and into an empty net. It was Asllani's first league goal of the season, and he barely had to aim.

Hoffenheim smelled blood. Sixteen minutes later the same two men combined properly this time, a slick one-two between Asllani and Tim Lemperle cutting Schalke open, and Lemperle finished calmly from around ten metres for 2-0. It was his second goal of the campaign, and at that point the hosts looked comfortable, the 28,369 crowd at the PreZero Arena settling in for a routine home win.

Schalke, though, refused to fold. The promoted side, backed by a huge travelling support, kept coming. They created the better chances on the balance of play — the expected-goals count would later read 2.81 to Hoffenheim's 2.28 — but for 80 minutes the ball would not go in. Then, with nine minutes left, it finally did. Substitute Edin Dzeko met a corner with a header that Oliver Baumann could only parry, and Junior Adamu, on from the bench himself, reacted quickest to sweep home the rebound.

It was more than a consolation. Adamu's strike ended a run of exactly 500 goalless competitive minutes for the Royal Blues, and it was the club's first goal from a striker all season. The Austrian was even voted man of the match for his troubles, which tells you plenty about the shift he put in after coming on in the 70th minute. Schalke pushed for an equaliser in the closing stages, but Hoffenheim held on.

The result, though, was almost an afterthought by full time. The second half had been stopped for several minutes after a horrible collision between Karius and his own teammate Robin Gosens, the goalkeeper taking a heavy blow to the head as Gosens rushed in to clear. Both men had to leave the match. Coach Miron Muslic said afterwards that Schalke feared a serious knee injury for Gosens, and neither player had a definitive diagnosis in the hours after the game. Karius, remember, had already been at the centre of the opening goal — a night to forget in every sense.

For Hoffenheim, the three points lift them to ninth on 12 points, a solid mid-table return after nine rounds. For Schalke, the picture is darker. Second from bottom on six points, out of the relegation places only on goal difference, and now possibly without two senior players heading into the international break. Their next game is at home to Stuttgart on November 21, and by then Muslic will know whether the damage from Sinsheim is measured in weeks or months. On Sunday, at least, they found the net again. That, after 500 minutes of silence, is somewhere to start.