XPath returns nothing when tranfsorming XHTML to HTML with Java Saxon

Question

Given is a XHTML File, which includes a few tables. This code is the part I am trying to grab:

<div class="table-wrapper">
                            <table class="menu-table">
                                <tbody>
                                <tr class="menu-table-row">
                                    <td>Tellergericht
                                        <div class="icon-tellergericht" title="Tellergericht"></div>
                                        <div class="icon-rind" title="Rind"></div>
                                        <div class="icon-schwein" title="Schwein"></div>
                                    </td>
                                    <td>Ausgabe</td>
                                    <td>Student</td>
                                    <td>Mitarbeiter</td>
                                    <td>Gast</td>
                                </tr>
                                <tr>
                                    <td>Brötchen <sup>(9,G,A)</sup></td>
                                    <td>Veg</td>
                                    <td>0,45 €</td>
                                    <td>0,60 €</td>
                                    <td>0,60 €</td>
                                </tr>

Here is the complete code: https://pastebin.com/wTNA7qgY

Therefore I have the following XLS code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:sp="http://www.example.com/speiseplan" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

    <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>

    <!-- root element matching -->
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:message>Debug: Entering root template</xsl:message>
        <sp:speiseplan>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="//div[@class='table-wrapper']/table[@class='menu-table']"/>
        </sp:speiseplan>
    </xsl:template>

    <!-- menu table matching -->
    <xsl:template match="//div[@class='table-wrapper']/table[@class='menu-table']">
        <xsl:message>Debug: Extracted date - <xsl:value-of select="preceding::div[@class='csc-textpic-text'][1]"/></xsl:message>
        <sp:gericht tag="{preceding::div[@class='csc-textpic-text'][1]}">
            <xsl:apply-templates select="tbody/tr[position() > 1]"/>
        </sp:gericht>
    </xsl:template>

    <!-- row matching -->
    <xsl:template match="tbody/tr">
        <xsl:message>Debug: Extracted name - <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(td[1])"/></xsl:message>
        <xsl:message>Debug: Extracted allergene - <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(substring-before(substring-after(td[1],'('),')'))"/></xsl:message>
        <xsl:message>Debug: Extracted student price - <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(td[3])"/></xsl:message>
        <sp:gericht>
            <sp:name>
                <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(td[1])"/>
            </sp:name>
            <sp:zusatzstoffe>
                <sp:allergene>
                    <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(substring-before(substring-after(td[1],'('),')'))"/>
                </sp:allergene>
            </sp:zusatzstoffe>
            <sp:preis student="{normalize-space(td[3])}" mitarbeiter="{normalize-space(td[4])}" gast="{normalize-space(td[5])}"/>
        </sp:gericht>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

To transform the XHTML I was given Saxon HE 12.4 and the following command to execute:

java -cp SaxonHE12-4J/saxon-he-12.4.jar net.sf.saxon.Transform -s:Mensa-Stralsund-14.12.2023.xhtml -xsl:transform.xsl -o:Mensa-Stralsund-14.12.2023.xml

This results in the only message Entering root template.

My guess was, that the XPath variables were wrong, but when I checked in a Online XPath tester, it gave me the right results immediately.

I tried to just test the XPath query with saxon: java -cp SaxonHE12-4J/saxon-he-12.4.jar net.sf.saxon.Query -s:Mensa-Stralsund-14.12.2023.xhtml -qs:"//div[@class='table-wrapper']/table[@class='menu-table']", but it didn't work neither.

What could be my problem? Thanks a lot for your time. Happy holidays