When Bayer Leverkusen won the first Bundesliga title in 120 years, Schalke 04, a veteran Bundesliga powerhouse with a history of 120 years, may not even be able to stay in the Bundesliga.
As of the current Bundesliga standings, Schalke 04 are only 12th, just five points above the relegation zone, do you remember? Five years ago they were a Champions League-level team, and that year they lost to Manchester City in the quarter-finals.
At that time, the Feltings Arena was full of people, and the Ruhr derby was very hot at that time, but no one expected that this would be the last afterglow of the Shakhtars, and the most brilliant blue of the Bundesliga was quietly moving away.
For many Chinese fans, Schalke 04 was once prominent, Neuer went to the world stage from here, Raul helped the team reach the Champions League semi-finals in his twilight years, and Hao Junmin is the last shine of Chinese players in the Bundesliga, and Schalke has nearly 2.4 million followers on social media more than Leverkusen.
These all represent Schalke's former glory, but in the past 5 years they have fallen all the way from the Champions League, twice relegated to the Bundesliga, and now infinitely close to the Bundesliga, except for some game bloggers shouting "Schalke start!", but the cruel reality is that Schalke is not only unable to start but is still dying.
Why did Schalke 04 end up where it is now? The answer is only two words – debt.
The management had no choice in the face of declining performance and poor youth training results, but instead made the team fall into the whirlpool of public opinion in the operation again and again, and the poor management ability of the uniform team directly led to many internal problems.
In the face of the economic crisis, the team took 24 bus drivers serving the youth team, but their monthly salaries were not high, which directly sparked criticism from the German Labor Council.
During the pandemic, the team that played away from the epidemic asked fans who had refunded their tickets to fill out a hardship special case application form and attach documents such as unemployment certificates, which directly angered the team's food and clothing parents, and the die-hard fan group issued an open letter saying: "The disaster did not start in the stadium, our morality is bankrupt." ”
The team has a first-class youth training system in the entire Bundesliga, Goretzka, Kolasinac, and Nubel are all high-quality products of the team's youth training in the past few years, but the management's stupid tricks make these people either leave freely or sell at a low price, and the players who are poached with high salaries cannot play at a high price.
In the past five years, the team has changed 12 managers, with an average of more than two changes per season, and this confusion is directly reflected in the results, from January 2020 to January 2021, Schalke had a record 30 games without a win across the season.
The situation has not improved this season, with some players even leaving the pitch at half-time to express their displeasure with the team in the defeat to Fortuna Dusseldorf.
They are still 100 million euros in debt, and their huge deficit has even led them to consider selling the Arena of Fertings.
Like many Bundesliga teams, Schalke 04 is a membership-based club, which directly blocks the possibility of external capital transfusion, and the only way they can make money is through fans and sponsorship, and this season their chest advertising was once unbidden, and finally only sold for 2 million a year, which may not be enough to pay the annual salary of the team's big-name stars.
The tragic thing is that if it is reduced to the German C, they can't even get 25 million euros in TV broadcast fees, and they can only get 1.3 million euros, if the situation worsens, Schalke 04 can only go to the abyss, Schalke wants to restart It still has a long way to go.