Spurs midfielder ‘delighted’ to join Schalke for the season

Ian Watson

Nabil Bentaleb has joined Schalke on a season-long loan from Tottenham, both clubs have confirmed.

The 21-year-old Algeria midfielder passed a medical in Gelsenkirchen on August 18 and the final paperwork for the move to be finalised was received on Thursday.

“We’re pleased that Nabil Bentaleb has decided to join us,” Schalke’s director of sport Christian Heidel said on the Bundesliga club’s website. “We’ve been working on this transfer for the past six weeks.

“He’s an aggressive, tough-tackling midfielder who further increases the options our coach Markus Weinzierl has.”

Bentaleb confirmed his move with a tweet in which he said: “Delighted to have signed for @s04 new chapter new beginnings.”

He added on schalke04.de: “I’m really looking forward to this challenge at Schalke. I heard of their interest for the first time six weeks ago and, since then, I had been hoping that a move might work out.

“Thanks to their great fans, Schalke are also known as a big club in England. My visit here in recent weeks further confirmed this desire.

“I’m very happy and I now want to help the team reach their objectives for the season.”

Heidel also confirmed at a press conference on Thursday that former Spurs defender Benjamin Stambouli is set to join Schalke from Paris Saint-Germain.

“He’s currently undergoing a medical and we’ve just got to wait for the results, but we are positive that it will work out,” Heidel said.

“We need to have at least two players per position because we’re planning on playing around 40 matches this season.

“We have been searching for new players for weeks and we were always sure of who we wanted, and we were just working on getting those players.”

Bentaleb and Stambouli know each other from their time at Tottenham, and Schalke coach Markus Weinzierl is hoping this will help the pair settle in Germany.

“They are going to do our game a lot of good,” he said. “Bentaleb is 100 per cent fit, but we still need some patience and to give him all the necessary time to integrate.”

Heidel, however, ruled out making a move for another Spurs player, Son Heung-min.

“He’s an excellent footballer and we know him from his Hamburg and Leverkusen days, but he has nothing to do with Schalke,” the former Mainz director of sport said.