Good to Know — Schalke 04

The Ruhr area stands for rugged, hard-labour football, and Schalke is seen as the emblem of this worker-style game.

The Ruhr area stands for rugged, hard-labour football,

The Ruhr area stands for rugged, hard-labour football, and Schalke is seen as the emblem of this worker-style game.

The Ruhr area stands for rugged, hard-labour football, and Schalke is seen as the emblem of this worker-style game. First dig in, then heel, tip, one-two-three. That is nonsense. It may fit Schalke’s lumpy football in the 1980s or the Euro Fighters of the 1990s.

But what few people know is that it

But what few people know is that it does not fit Schalke’s greatest eras before the Bundesliga.

But what few people know is that it does not fit Schalke’s greatest eras before the Bundesliga. The term “Schalker Kreisel” is familiar enough, but people often overlook that it referred to a delicate short-passing game – a kind of early Tiki-Taka, Ruhr style – and had very little to do with the kick-and-rush labourer stereotype. The players themselves said so openly. “We always said the ball has to do the running. In the end our play worked almost mechanically – like a clock,” explained Ernst Kuzorra, who, together with his brother-in-law Fritz Szepan, made spectators marvel and experts swoon in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Schalke’s system from the greatest era in club

Schalke’s system from the greatest era in club history between 1934 and 1942 was a footballing innovation and also shaped the team that won the club’s last German title in 1958.

Schalke’s system from the greatest era in club history between 1934 and 1942 was a footballing innovation and also shaped the team that won the club’s last German title in 1958. That title-winning side around Berni Klodt also lived more from circulation of the ball than from the graft of hard-edged workers, as Christoph Biermann reports in If We Dream of Football. “Miners, steelworks – that was hard work, and from that came the belief that football here was played grimly and hard,” championship player Willi Koslowski told him. But that was not the reality. And that, too, is deeply rooted in Ruhr football tradition. There is the pöhler and the fummler. In north-west Germany, a pöhler is someone who hoofs the ball long and hard. In the Ruhr, the pöhler is a highly respected street footballer with all the technical tools, who nevertheless fully serves the team – unlike the fummler, the selfish stylist who stands out from the hard-working collective.

The greatest football rivalry in Germany is the

The greatest football rivalry in Germany is the one between Schalke 04 and Borussia Dortmund.

The greatest football rivalry in Germany is the one between Schalke 04 and Borussia Dortmund. That is common knowledge. Less well known is that it is actually a relatively modern rivalry, not one with overwhelmingly deep roots before the Second World War. There was no reason for such enmity then: Dortmund were too insignificant and Schalke too dominant. The story of the “mother of all derbies” in the Ruhr begins with a 4–2. FC Schalke 04 beat Borussia Dortmund clearly in May 1925, and no one was surprised. The BVB were still fiddling around in the Dortmund-Herne district league, while Schalke were already the dominant western club and nine years later would become German champions for the first time.

On the return journey from Berlin, the railway

On the return journey from Berlin, the railway stopped 35 kilometres short of Gelsenkirchen.

On the return journey from Berlin, the railway stopped 35 kilometres short of Gelsenkirchen. Schalke’s players then rode in open cars through downtown Dortmund, were cheered by the crowds, and became the first football team to sign the city’s golden book. Hard to believe, but, as former BVB spokesman and later archivist Gerd Kolbe put it, “there was deep sympathy between the two clubs.” Not forever. The turning points came in 1943, 1947 and the 1950s. In November 1943, after years of heavy beatings, Dortmund finally beat the previously dominant rivals, and the first BVB international, August Lenz, scored the winning goal. After the war, Dortmund developed into a serious challenger. They even won the first post-war meeting and became Westphalian champions in 1947 with a 3–2 victory. The changing of the guard in the Oberliga West followed, along with Dortmund’s German titles in 1956 and 1957. Schalke answered with one more title in 1958, but after their own weaker phase in the 1970s, Dortmund eventually replaced Schalke as the number one club in the Ruhr. Schalke’s three cup wins stand against Dortmund’s five league titles and one Champions League. The great blue-and-white versus black-and-yellow hatred really developed in the Bundesliga era, fuelled by mutual envy over the other club’s success.

The collapse of FC Schalke 04 between 2020 and 2023 is one of the most dramatic stories in Bundesliga history.