Welcome to the Soccer Tavern, where we’re discussing the history, philosophy, and culture of the beautiful game. My name is Dave and in this video, we’re talking about the history of Fußballclub Gelsenkirchen-Schalke 04 e. V., better known as FC Schalke. Pull up a seat and let’s start the discussion.
FC Schalke is located in the northern part of the city of Gelsenkirchen. Gelsenkirchen is located in the western part of Germany. The club currently play in the Bundesliga and its home ground is called the VELTINS-Arena. The stadium opened in 2001 and holds about 62,000 people.
Origin
On May 4, 1904, a group of boys, led by Willy Gies, formed Westphalia Schalke as a soccer club. Schalke is a neighborhood in the city of Gelsenkirchen. The club’s original colors were red & yellow.
In Germany in the early 1900s, gymnastics was the bigger sport and soccer clubs found it tough to exist on their own. For this reason, Westphalia Schalke merged with the gymnastics club Turnverein Schalke 1877 in 1912. As a result of the merger, the new club’s colors became blue and white in 1913. Those are the current colors still used by the club today.
The club would go through a handful of other mergers and splits before its final split from the gymnastics club in 1924. On January 5, 1924, the club officially became Fußballclub Schalke 04. The 04 was a reference to the club’s original founding year of 1904.
The final update to the club’s name came in 1927, when the club decided to build its own stadium. The city of Gelsenkirchen helped the club with friendly land and loan terms. As a thank you, the club added the city’s name to its official name to become Fußballclub Gelsenkirchen-Schalke 04.
Nicknames
The club has 2 main nicknames: Die Königsblauen, meaning The Royal Blues, & Die Knappen, meaning The Miners. Both nicknames have straightforward explanations.
The Königsblauen nickname comes from the club’s main shirt color of royal blue.
And the Knappen nickname comes from the fact that many of the clubs fans and players in its early days were workers at the local mines in Gelsenkirchen.
Crest
Schalke has a very simple crest.
The crest is merely the club’s main colors of royal blue and white, featuring the letters of S for Schalke and 04 for the club’s founding year. These two items are encircled by a large white G, which is a reference to Gelsenkirchen – the club’s home city.
Important Events
The first event I’d like to highlight happened in 1920. During this year, Hans and Fred Ballmann, whose parents had emigrated to England from Germany before WWI, were deported from England back to Germany. They settled in Gelsenkirchen where they were reacquainted with Fred Kühne, who had been a captive during WWI in England. Kühne convinced the players to join his club, Schalke. Because the brothers had grown up in England, they taught their teammates a new style of play modeled on the short Scottish passing game that had become popular in parts of England. The style of play was called the Schalker Kreisel, which translates to ‘Spinning Top’ in English. The club became one of the most attractive and successful clubs in the 1930s and early 1940s and it all started with Ballmann brothers’ deportation. Schalke won 7 major domestic titles during this time.
The second event I’d like to discuss happened when Schalke finished in last place in the 1964-1965 Bundesliga season. Fortunately for Schalke, another Bundesliga club, Hertha Berlin, was caught bribing players. The league automatically forced Hertha into relegation. The Bundesliga wanted a team from Berlin in the league for political reasons and made the decision to add Tasmania Berlin in Hertha’s place. Schalke and the other relegated team, Karlsruhe, protested that they had more of a right to be in the Bundesliga. So, sometime in the late spring or early summer of 1965, the Bundesliga expanded from 16 teams to 18 teams to allow Karlsuhe and Schalke to remain in the Bundesliga. That is how Schalke avoided its first ever relegation.
The third event happened on April 17, 1971 when Schalke played Arminia Bielefeld. Schalke’s first team players accepted a bribe from Arminia of 40,000 Deutsch Marks to lose the match. During the match, the club’s goalkeeper was injured and reserve keeper Dieter Burdenski entered the match. He didn’t know about the fix and played ridiculously well. His own players were telling him to let the balls in, but he didn’t understand why and kept playing well. Eventually Arminia broke through and won the match 1-0. Later in the year, Schalke players lied under oath that the match had not been fixed. Eventually, the truth came out and some Schalke rivals still refer to the club as FC Meineid, meaning FC Perjury. Schalke wasn’t the only club involved in fixed matches that season, but it was one of the most high profile with 13 players receiving some punishment. Many viewed Schalke as getting off light because of their status at the time and some still hold this against the club today.
The 4th event happened on May 2, 1984. Schalke were a second division side at the time and were playing Bayern Munich in the semi-final of the DFB Pokal. Only a day earlier, the other semifinal matched ended 5-4 after extra time and no one possibly thought this game could be more dramatic. They were wrong. Regulation ended 4-4 and it was a back and forth affair throughout normal time. In the 112th minute, Bayern took the lead to make it 5-4, but Schalke equalized in the 116th minute. Ninety seconds later, Bayern took the lead again only for Schalke to score in the 123rd minute through Olaf Thon. Thon, who had turned 18 years old the previous day, had possibly his greatest individual performance of his career as he scored a hattrick in the game. The match ended 6-6 and Bayern ended up winning the replay 3-2, but this semi-final is considered one of the greatest semi-finals in DFB Pokal history.
And the final date I’d like to mention is May 21, 1997. Schalke played Inter Milan in the final of the UEFA Cup (now known as the Europa League). It was Schalke’s first European final and the second leg took place in Milan on May 21. The first leg ended 1-0 to Schalke in Gelsenkirchen. This match also ended 1-0, but in favor of Inter Milan, so it went to penalties. Schalke prevailed 4-1 in the shootout to win its first and only major European title to date.
Supporters
Before every home match, the VELTINS-Arena goes dark and the fans loudly sing Das Steigerlied. It is an old coal-mining song where the miners hope to see the light at the end of their shift. As already mentioned, Schalke is located in the heart of Germany where coal-mining used to take place, so the song connects deeply with the club and its supporters. It’s a really cool tradition.
Noteworthy Players
The club has had many noteworthy players in its history.
Klaus Fichtel was a defender who made his debut for Schalke in 1965 and played for the club for 15 years before moving to Werder Bremen in 1980. He’d play at Werder for 4 years before returning to Schalke in 1984 to play for another 4 years. When Fichtel retired in May of 1988, he had played more than 550 Bundesliga matches in his career and is the oldest player ever to make an appearance in the Bundesliga. He was 43 years 6 months and 2 days old in his last appearance. That is more than a year older than the next closest player.
The next player I’d like to highlight is Klaus Fischer. Fischer is Schalke’s all-time leading goal scorer and is 2nd on the Bundesliga all-time scoring list with 268 Bundesliga goals. He joined the club in the summer of 1970 and left 11 years later, winning a DFB Pokal in 1972. While playing for West Germany in 1977, Fischer scored a bicycle kick against Switzerland. It was voted goal of the century by Sportschau, which is a German sports magazine & broadcaster.
The third player I’d like to discuss is Olaf Thon, who we already mentioned in the Important Events section. Thon began his career in 1983 with Schalke. He moved to Bayern in 1988, but returned to Schalke in 1994 where he’d end his career in 2002. He played as a center midfielder and a sweeper/defender during his career. He won the World Cup with West Germany in 1990 and won the 1997 UEFA Cup with Schalke.
The 4th player I’d like to mention also began his career at Schalke, Jens Lehmann. Lehmann was a goalkeeper for Schalke from 1988-1998. He was the goalkeeper as Schalke won their penalty shootout in the 1997 UEFA Cup Final with Jens making a crucial save on Inter Milan’s first shot. After leaving Schalke in 1998, Lehmann eventually joined Arsenal in England in 2003. He played every match during that club’s Invincibles season in 2003-2004 when the club went unbeaten in the league and won the Premier League. Jens is a legendary keeper for Schalke.
The final player I want to discuss in detail is Gerald Asamoah. Asamoah was born in Ghana but grew up in Germany. He joined Schalke in 1999 with 3 years of professional experience. He’d play the majority of his career with Schalke – 11 years in total – becoming a fan favorite for his tireless work rate. He won 2 DFB Pokals with Schalke and became the first ever African born player to represent the German national team.
And 2 modern players I want to briefly mention are Manuel Neuer & Mesut Özil. Both began their professional careers with Schalke before moving on to other clubs where they’ve had greater success.
Noteworthy Managers
I’d like to highlight 2 managers in detail in this section.
Edi Frühwirth managed Schalke for 5 seasons from 1954 to 1959. He led the club to the 1955 DFB Pokal Final where they ultimately lost. Frühwirth also led the club to the 1958 German National Championship, which is the last time the club was crowned league champion. It was a great accomplishment for Edi and the club and he is worthy of mention here. He unfortunately died in a car accident in 1973.
And the other manager I’d like to discuss here is Huub Stevens. Stevens had 3 different stints with Schalke between 1996 and 2019. Schalke fans voted Stevens the manager of the century for the club in 1999. In his first spell from 1996-2002, he led the club to the UEFA Cup that we’ve already discussed, and Stevens also won back-to-back DFB Pokals in 2001 & 2002. His first period with the club was his most successful and he’d manage more than 300 matches across all competitions for the club.
Additionally, Jupp Heynckes & Udo Lattek were legendary managers for their time elsewhere, but had short stints at Schalke so I wanted to quickly mention them here. They’re 2 of probably the top 5 German managers of all-time.
Rivals
FC Schalke’s most passionate rivalry is with Borussia Dortmund. It is called the Revier Derby or sometimes the Ruhr Derby and is one of the fiercest rivalries in the Bundesliga. Both clubs are two of the biggest clubs based in the epicenter of the coal-mining & steel-forging industries in the Ruhr region of Germany. People from the area are often hard-working, blue-collar citizens that’re obsessed with soccer. So, they’re passionate people already. Add in the fact that the two clubs are about 25 miles apart and have met more than 150 times since first playing in 1925, and you can understand how a rivalry has developed.
Additionally, a match in Dortmund in 1969 saw overcrowded fans rush the pitch after Schalke took an early lead. Police tried to control the fans with German Shepherds, who bit 2 Schalke players in the chaos. That led to increased tensions between the clubs. Recently, Dortmund ended Schalke’s title hopes in 2007. These events along with many others have helped this flourish into one of the best rivalries in the Bundesliga.
Stats & Records
The stats and records we’re about to discuss are as of October 2019, which is when we are recording this video.
Schalke has played 52 seasons in the top flight in its history.
The club has 13 major trophies including:
- 7 German national championships, which were all won before the Bundesliga was created
- 5 DFB-Pokals (German Cups)
- 1 UEFA Cup (now known as the Europa League)
Die Knappen’s record first team appearance holder is Klaus Fichtel with 521 first team appearances.
The club’s record goal scorer is Klaus Fischer with 200 first team goals.
Schalke’s record transfer purchase was Breel Embolo from FC Basel in Switzerland on July 1, 2016 for ~€26.5M
And the club’s record transfer sale was Leroy Sané to Manchester City in England on August 2, 2016 for ~€50.5M.
And 1 last interesting fact about the club: in 1937, Schalke won both the national championship and the cup to become the first German club to win a double – meaning the domestic title and domestic cup competition in the same season.
So there you have it… a bit of history on Fußballclub Gelsenkirchen-Schalke 04. Let’s continue the discussion in the comments section below the video.
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