The two “Meister der Schmerzen” (Champions of Pain)

Schalke 04 entertain Manchester United in the first leg of the Champions League Semi Final on Tuesday night, here’s why all Newcastle United supporters should consider backing the German side even more than they were probably going to anyway.....

The cities of Newcastle upon Tyne and Gelsenkirchen were twinned in 1947 just two years after the end of the Second World War formalising a friendship that endures to this day. The cities share a unique industrial, social and footballing heritage that is worthy of further investigation and promotion as Schalke 04, the football team of Gelsenkirchen, gather more attention in the British media in the run up to their Champions League semi final with Manchester United this week.

Whereas Newcastle upon Tyne has been a major British city since 1400, asserting its dominance over the towns of the Tyne and the wider North East as a trading centre and strategic outpost, Gelsenkirchen developed as the result of the discovery of “black gold”, coal rather than oil, in around 1840. From this point the twin cities share a history intertwined in the industrial revolution and the exploitation of natural resources the profits of which seem to have passed by many of the citizens of the respective municipalities. Gelsenkirchen developed as the industries coal, steel and iron grew rapidly much as Newcastle was built on the back of the coal mining and ship building industries from the 16^th century onwards. While the phrase “coals to Newcastle” is synonymous with the Tyneside city, “the town of a thousand fires” is the slightly more romantic sobriquet given to the Westphalian twin. The towns share surprisingly similar, and equally turbulent, industrial pasts and the economic degradation suffered by Gelsenkirchen’s traditional industries from the 1950s onwards, followed by a regeneration and reinvention, bear close resemblance to the effects of the closing of the Northumberland and Durham coalfields and Tyneside shipyards from the 1970s to the present day. Gelsenkirchen has reinvented itself as a centre for service industries and science innovation, not unlike the call centre and emergent Science City developments Newcastle has embraced. Gelsenkirchen like Newcastle is a staunchly working class city with some of the most deprived areas of the country within its boundaries and these shared experiences extend to football as well as our pasts rooted in coal mines and labour.

The cities share similar sized populations of around 300,000 and are gloriously one club towns sharing a rivalry with near neighbours, for Sunderland read Dortmund, although I’m obliged to point out that Borussia are vastly more successful than NUFC’s poor relations from down the road (they’ve played in Europe in the last 30 years and won). However, it is both the passion of their supporters and the failure of the football teams that Newcastle and Gelsenkirchen define their twin status from the perspective of this Newcastle United supporter. Schalke 04 takes its name from its formation in 1904 in a pub in the Gelsenkirchen suburb of Schalke. In 1929 the club is renamed “FC Gelsenkirchen Shalke-04” in honour of the entire city, not unlike the earlier merger of Newcastle East and West End to form United, clubs representative of their respective cities entire populations. The club’s own website describes its history as “a rollercoaster” and the ups and downs are certainly many.

The most striking similarity between Shalke and NUFC is the shared spirit of their supporters in the face of adversity and, as the Schalke nickname bestowed by a newspaper, “Meister der Schmerzen” (Champions of Pain), suggests, the ability to snatch despair from the jaws of victory is always on show at the Veltins Arena, their home as it is at St James' Park. Schalke were embroiled in a match fixing scandal in the 1970s and been relegated from the Bundesliga three times and yet are still the best supported club in the Bundesliga over time, without the European Cups or recent Bundesliga titles of Bayern Munich or Dortmund. 

Whilst Newcastle have reached cup finals and famously passed up the opportunity to win the League Title in 1995/96 Schalke have a gross habit of choking in the Bundesliga like no other side inflicting misery on their supporters that is worn as a badge of honour, sound familiar? Schalke fill their 61,000 capacity stadium regularly, even for games in tournaments like the Intertoto Cup. Not only have they finished second in the Bundesliga five times since they last won the competition in 1958, they’ve managed to embarrassingly blow chances to wrap up the Bundesliga title in that time. In 2001 Schalke fans celebrated on the pitch as title rivals Bayern Munich were losing 1-0 at Hamburg until a 94^th minute, dubiously awarded, free kick allowed the Bavarians to equalise breaking hearts in Gelsenkirchen and sending the trophy to Munich. In 2006/07 Schalke were seven points clear at the top of the Bundesliga two months before the season’s end and again hopes were raised of a title. On the last day 04 led at home to Bielefeld whilst title rivals Stuttgart played a nervous draw with Cottbus until a Thomas Hitzelsperger goal brought Schalke back down to earth with a bump once again, the parallels with 95/96 are there for all to see. Incredibly as in Newcastle the support has stayed loyal to the team despite complaints from supporters of mismanagement within the club and investment in players who were paid more than their worth and application, signed for ridiculous transfer fees, a kick in the face in a working class post-industrial city as we know from our own bitter experience, eh Damian and Michael? In the disappointing 06/07 season Schalke drew in a home crowd of 61,780 fans, for an away game. Their defeat in the local derby at Dortmund was shown live on big screens in the Veltins Arena, still committed support that most clubs can only dream of.      

However despite all of this doom and gloom, perhaps NUFC fans could also use Shalke’s recent history as a source of inspiration; it is certainly more recently glorious than Newcastle United's. In May 1997 Schalke beat Inter Milan over two legs to secure the UEFA Cup, their first major trophy in 25 years, a wait Geordies can sympathise with. In 2001 Schalke ended a barren run of 29 years without a domestic trophy picking up the German Cup a trophy they went on to retain the following season. These cups were won with the support of Russian gas company “Gazprom” and their significant investment in the Westphalian side that had suffered a financial meltdown and a subsequent renaissance not unlike our own in the early 1990s, outside investment that has brought with it both joy and despair, but at least trophies. What NUFC fans would give for one of those.

So come Tuesday night I’ll settle down, perhaps with a carefully sourced bottle of Veltins beer, and I’ll be supporting Schalke, because like us they never really come up with the goods, their fans don’t often get much joy and are often derided as a laughing stock, but they’re always there, the people from the coal city, supporting their team and town, like us, their twins. I'd love it, just love it if they won.

Good luck Schalke.