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.
