Schalke 04 still waits for a Bundesliga title despite a huge following
Schalke 04 has around 210,000 members and ranks among Germany's most loved clubs, yet its last national championship came in 1958, before the Bundesliga existed. In 2001 it believed the title was won, until Bayern scored in the fourth minute of stoppage time elsewhere. Its glory years lie much further back.
High school students founded the club on 4 May 1904 as Westfalia Schalke, wearing red and yellow. Shut out of the official league, they played in unofficial 'wild' associations and merged with a gymnastics club to gain entry, before splitting away for good in 1924 as FC Schalke 04 in royal blue and white. Their quick, short man-to-man passing became known as the Schalker Kreisel, or spinning top, and made them favourites of Gelsenkirchen's working class. In 1930 they were suspended for nearly half a year for paying wages above league limits, yet 70,000 turned out for their first game back.
From 1933 to 1942 Schalke reached 14 of 18 national finals and won its regional league every season, taking six championships between 1934 and 1942 and becoming, in 1937, the first German club to win the league and cup double. Across the dozen seasons to 1945 it lost only 6 of 189 regional league matches, dominance the Nazi regime exploited as propaganda.
The postwar decades were harder. A 1958 win over Hamburger SV brought the last title, and after joining the Bundesliga in 1963 the club was badly damaged by the 1971 bribery scandal, when players were found to have deliberately lost a match to Arminia Bielefeld. Several internationals received life bans, later reduced. Relegations followed in the 1980s.
Salvation came from Dutch coach Huub Stevens, whose 'Euro Fighters' beat Inter Milan on penalties for the 1997 UEFA Cup. His motto, roughly 'it has to read nil', entered everyday German. Schalke later won back-to-back cups, finished second three times in seven seasons, and in 2025–26 won promotion back to the top flight.
Source: FC Schalke 04
