On matchday, even for friendlies, Gelsenkirchen pauses as locals turn their attention to Schalke's Veltins-Arena. Everywhere you look, swathes of fans in blue and white are arriving by tram, on foot or by car. In the team's first game back in the Bundesliga for three years, 6,000 away fans stayed after the final whistle to support the players despite a 3-0 defeat at Augsburg.
"It's a kind of religious feeling that people have towards Schalke," said Professor Frank Eckardt, who grew up in the Schalke-Nord area. "It feels like people think, 'OK, we don't have anything else, but we have Schalke. It's our club.' "If you go to graveyards, for example, you will find that people have Schalke on their graves in one way or the other.
So it is really something deep. "You can take everything from us, but you will never take Schalke from us. That's what they really believe." Alvarez to Arsenal?
Plus Muslić on Schalke Listen to the More than the Score podcast When Schalke fell to Bundesliga 2 for the first time in 21 years and insolvency looked a genuine possibility - because of massive debts brought on by rash spending, failure to qualify for Europe and Covid-19 - the only guarantee was the fans would remain. Despite the threat against the club's existence, Schalke bounced back to the top flight straight away in 2022. A year later they were in the second tier again, and that is where they would stay for the next three seasons, with the first two campaigns showing little hope for the future.
A 10th-placed finish was followed by an even more dismal 14th - only two places above a relegation play-off spot. German football expert Mark Lovell said: "They suffered with the burden of expectation. They were expected to basically walk the league every season despite having huge financial problems.
"There's sympathy for Schalke, but they've been their own worst enemies by chasing success and extending themselves too far. "They've been living beyond their means for many seasons. When you do suffer relegation something has to give, and they haven't been able to buy their way out.
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