Robin Gosens Returns to Schalke After Bitter Exit from Fiorentina
Robin Gosens did not leave Florence on his own terms. He was pushed to the door, then told not to bother coming back.
Frozen out of the Fiorentina squad, excluded from pre-season and informed he was no longer part of new coach Fabio Grosso’s plans despite a contract running to June 2028, the 32-year-old has completed a move to Schalke 04 – the club he supported as a child. The deal is understood to be a loan with an obligation to buy for around €2.5m plus add-ons.
The move brings a neat symmetry to his career. The mood around his departure is anything but neat.
From home to exile
When Gosens arrived at Fiorentina two years ago, it felt like a perfect fit. A hard-running, intelligent full-back in a football city that worships work-rate as much as flair.
“Happy” is how he described that first opportunity. As the months rolled by, that happiness deepened. Florence became home. His first season went “incredibly well,” his second “incredibly badly,” as he put it, but his commitment never wavered.
He insists he gave “my life” every day, on and off the pitch. He stresses he behaved fairly with everyone at the club. Then, almost overnight, the story turned.
One day he was part of the furniture. The next, he was told not to show up.
The drastic decision to exclude him from the squad hit him hard. He went to train, he says, without creating chaos, trying to understand how a relationship that seemed so solid could unravel in such a short space of time. The answer never came.
For Gosens, the most painful part is the feeling that the story “deserved a different ending.” Clubs, he notes, demand identity, gratitude, respect and effort from players. He argues that players deserve the same in return. He is adamant he gave all of that, and more.
He wanted to fight for his place. Then came the realisation that there is no point fighting when there is no possibility of victory.
A farewell laced with hurt and gratitude
Today, as the move to Schalke was finalised, Gosens went public with a long, emotional farewell message. There was no attempt to hide the bitterness at how Fiorentina’s hierarchy handled his exit, but he refused to let resentment have the last word.
He spoke of gratitude. Gratitude for an “intense and wonderful” spell in a city he and his family grew to love. Gratitude for team-mates who became “like brothers,” for the kit staff, chefs, waiters, every coach and backroom member he worked with.
He even paused to defend the medical staff, who he feels came under “too much criticism” last season, much of it, in his view, unjust.
The supporters received a special mention. They made him feel at home from the first minute, he said, and gave him the sense that what he did on the pitch “had meaning.” He also thanked president Rocco Commisso and his family for giving him the chance to wear the Viola shirt.
The tone was raw but controlled. Hurt, but not vindictive. A player trying to close a chapter with dignity, even as he struggles to understand why it had to close at all.
Back to where it all began
And so his career loops back to its emotional starting point. Schalke 04, the club he followed as a boy, now becomes his professional present.
“Fortunately, my destiny is taking me right back to the beginning,” he wrote. Back to where his love for the game started. Back to the place where the journey to make his dreams come true began.
At 32, with most of his career spent in Italian football and memories of European nights and Serie A battles etched into his story, Gosens leaves Florence convinced he has left his “heart and soul” in the city.
The manner of his exit may linger like a bruise. The next chapter, though, will be written in Gelsenkirchen, where a boyhood passion now turns into a late-career mission.
