That too, it seems they fell into the trap of throwing good money after bad on players to chase success/league positions and ultimately it's left them in a fine mess.
Schalke may have to start over as an amateur club if relegated
- Thread starter Berbaclass
- Start date
Won't they lose the stadium as well as other assets?
It's far too early to speculate about that. Getting relegated and then not getting a 3rd league license would be a terrible blow, but it wouldn't immediately mean bankruptcy (but probable not being far from it). So when this happens there will be discussions about this, how to resolve the situation. At the moment I don't see an automatism for them to lose the stadium immediately, there could be other solutions (like a deal to effectively pledge the stadium profit to pay of their debts, but keeping the stadium or something like that).
So if every member is donating 1000 Euro they will be fine
Bring back Ralf?
Schalke's fans would definitely love that, at least a lot of them. Still don't think this would happen, he declined the last time he was asked due to to much chaos there (that was shortly before he signed for United).
Schamateurs 04
Well, that's very misleading, considering all of the actual big sports clubs are privately owned and, therefore, don't qualify for whatever this ranking is.
Jassim should buy them
The privately owned technically are corporations and not clubs despite usually being called that. And no, the fact that Bayern, Barcelona and Real Madrid all are clubs and not privately owned corporations shows that even the biggest teams can be organized this way.
Surprised none of the oil tycoons haven't taken on the challenge on returning the club to its former glory, especially how dedicated the fan base are.
Would be a chance to come out with a clean reputation if they did it right. Clear their debts and gradually improve the club like a Wrexham project.
If money was no issue to me, I'd jump at the chance in a heartbeat.
Would be a chance to come out with a clean reputation if they did it right. Clear their debts and gradually improve the club like a Wrexham project.
If money was no issue to me, I'd jump at the chance in a heartbeat.
That's exactly why this is very hard to imagine. The fans wouldn't want to sell their club, and any investor would only be allowed to have a minority share even if he provides most of the money. I suggest reading a bit about the disaster 1860 München became after Hasan Ismaik invested into the club. What happened there is more or less what you envision here for Schalke, and it went truly terrible.
Your post was in response to a comment about Shalke having a big fan base. I merely pointed out that other clubs have every bit as large or larger “glorified fan bases”.
Germany having a fan ownership model doesn’t negate fan bases from other countries and make Shalke the 6th largest sports club in the world based on some arbitrary criteria you came up with.
If that model was in other countries we would all be signed up to it.
I'll look into it, my knowledge on German football is minimal and only knows the surface of the relationship between Bayern and Dortmund during the latter's collapse and how they were saved. But even then, I'd feel I was wrong about somethings that happened.
I'll look into the 1860 München, thank
I think they are at least the fourth biggest club in Germany after Bayern and Dortmund and might be ahead of Hamburg. They are incredibly huge and their situation is really sad and dire.
Yes, fan base was mentioned, but I actually replied to the point that they are a big club, not only for Germany but on a global scale, and used membership numbers as a metric to prove it, simply because it is the most impressive for that club. I didn't mention the size of the fan base at all.
It was you who started mixing up fan membership programs like United have with actual club memberships and that's why I disagreed with you.
I can't even blame you for that as it was United's press release itself which claimed them to surpass Bayern München as the former leader in size. Which is laughable in two ways, because it's two different things and even then Bayern wasn't the biggest club in the world anyways. I truly had to check twice to verify that this BS was actually a club statement, so stupid I think it is.
And again, Germany by far isn't the only country where clubs are still real clubs, see here for reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sports_clubs_by_membership
As you can see the clubs are from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Portugal and Spain. Most of these countries have a more mixed approach than Germany, so that they have both clubs and corporations in their leagues, but on the other hand Leverkusen and Wolfsburg also are privately owned in Germany, so even we have exceptions.
And by the way, in theory nothing would stop you from forming a "Manchester United Ownership Club" and make an offer to the Glazers, that would be a way to get fan ownership in the PL.
Bargain sale at Schalke? Should we ignore that they're about to get relegated?
More like garbage sale. There is a reason why they are in danger being relegated from the 2nd to 3rd league.
Was about to say that. Their squad are quite poor, even for 2.Bundesliga standards. And if you remove Kamaran and Murkin from the team and their good to go down.
Al-Shalqi 04Jassim should buy them
I have to admit, I was gloating a bit to myself when they first went down to the second league, and I honestly thought that given their history of absolutely atrocious management decisions it was absolutely deserved.
I am not gloating anymore, because honestly at this point I find it just sad for their large base of devoted fans to whom the club means a lot. It is also sad for all the other club segments (Schalke does a lot more than just football) that were negatively impacted by the massive amounts of debt racked up by the men's first team and associated things like the stadium which Schalke absolutely could not afford to build. I have to admit, back when their first team dropped out of the BL, my first thought was not how that would screw over other activities of the club. I did quite a double take when, just to give an example, Schalke sold their starting spot in the LEC, the highest League of Legends competition in Europe in which Schalke had a team, for 26.5m Euros - certainly made me reasses my thoughts about what kinds of sums were going around there.
Then again, a historically big and much loved traditional club they might be, but it's not like they have some god-given right to stay up when other clubs were just doing a way better job - and in most cases with a lot less resources. So if they somehow manage to drop straight through the second league into the third... that's on them. It's not like all hope's lost, there are plenty of games left and there's only eight points difference between 6th and 16th place. But their trajectory certainly doesn't look good.
I am not gloating anymore, because honestly at this point I find it just sad for their large base of devoted fans to whom the club means a lot. It is also sad for all the other club segments (Schalke does a lot more than just football) that were negatively impacted by the massive amounts of debt racked up by the men's first team and associated things like the stadium which Schalke absolutely could not afford to build. I have to admit, back when their first team dropped out of the BL, my first thought was not how that would screw over other activities of the club. I did quite a double take when, just to give an example, Schalke sold their starting spot in the LEC, the highest League of Legends competition in Europe in which Schalke had a team, for 26.5m Euros - certainly made me reasses my thoughts about what kinds of sums were going around there.
Then again, a historically big and much loved traditional club they might be, but it's not like they have some god-given right to stay up when other clubs were just doing a way better job - and in most cases with a lot less resources. So if they somehow manage to drop straight through the second league into the third... that's on them. It's not like all hope's lost, there are plenty of games left and there's only eight points difference between 6th and 16th place. But their trajectory certainly doesn't look good.
Hertha are going through something similar. And then of course we have Hamburg's perennial inability to get re-promoted. The common denominator in those three?
It is the club colour royal blue. This bright, annoying blue is the true reason of these clubs' downfalls. It is an unpleasant colour, bad vibes, does not project a sense of belonging, subconsciously players do not like to wear the shirt and would rather leave.
What these clubs really would need to do to save themselves is change their club colour; of course Schalke define themselves by it so they are in deepest in the shit, and most unsaveable.
It is the club colour royal blue. This bright, annoying blue is the true reason of these clubs' downfalls. It is an unpleasant colour, bad vibes, does not project a sense of belonging, subconsciously players do not like to wear the shirt and would rather leave.
What these clubs really would need to do to save themselves is change their club colour; of course Schalke define themselves by it so they are in deepest in the shit, and most unsaveable.
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As long as they call the new club Schalke 24, I'll allow it
Plus side:
I don't see how they could possibly survive that on their own, but considering how big the club is I wouldn't rule out that they'd find a way: selling part of the club, having some alliance of rich fans or friendly businesses and creditors writing off part of their debt. It would seem terribly pointless to let them go bankrupt: I mean how would you go about liquidating their assets? Their squad is worthless aside from Ouedraogo and contracts would reportedly be voided if they go down. And who would buy an oversized stadium or Bundesliga level training campus in the shithole that is Gelsenkirchen?
And while other clubs have protected themselves by spinning off their professional football divisions into separate legal entities, thereby containing the risk. Schalke never did. So if they go bust everything will be up for grabs, including the club name and logo. So no straight up reboot in a lower division. It'll be Schalke O4 for them.
Just look at their most expensive transfers:
Huntelaar is the only one, who was a success and even he only had one truly great season and gradually turned into more and more of a problem afterwards. None of them generated at profit. The top three were complete disasters. They always kept their debt on barely manageable levels. Always spent money they hadn't actually earned yet on players that flopped and they also decided to invest €100m into their training ground, just as they were beginning to go up in flames.
- Geraerts doesn't have a relegation worthy ppg since taking over (4W1D5L), things feel a bit worse than they are, because they lost their two opening matches, which were kind of tough.
- They are scoring a healthy amount of goals, even with Ouedraogo injured.
- At home they can brute force their way to the enemy goal against any opponent in the league.
- Especially at the business end of the season they will create an atmosphere that most 2nd division teams aren't really prepared for.
- Osnabrück are basically already confirmed to take one relegation spot, so they "only" have to leave one team behind them.
- Braunschweig, one of the teams they are currently level with, were looking hopeless at the beginning of the season, but have since been one of the most in-form teams over the last 10 or so matches.
- Their next game is against Braunschweig, losing to them at home would be a terrible blow in terms of momentum that could see them spiraling.
- Similarly to their previous relegation season they have had a big turnover in their squad and it sometimes seems like they lack a proper squad hierarchy and some players may even be indifferent toward the club's fate.
- It's very hard for them to build some positive momentum, because their defense has let them down again and again. Making them lose points in games that were even or turning random away games into big defeats.
I don't see how they could possibly survive that on their own, but considering how big the club is I wouldn't rule out that they'd find a way: selling part of the club, having some alliance of rich fans or friendly businesses and creditors writing off part of their debt. It would seem terribly pointless to let them go bankrupt: I mean how would you go about liquidating their assets? Their squad is worthless aside from Ouedraogo and contracts would reportedly be voided if they go down. And who would buy an oversized stadium or Bundesliga level training campus in the shithole that is Gelsenkirchen?
And while other clubs have protected themselves by spinning off their professional football divisions into separate legal entities, thereby containing the risk. Schalke never did. So if they go bust everything will be up for grabs, including the club name and logo. So no straight up reboot in a lower division. It'll be Schalke O4 for them.
The stadium "only" cost €191m. That was a lot of money at the time they built it, but like Bayern they built it at the perfect time, right when football went into a massive boom and their revenue about tripled within 10 years. So no, some stadium megalomania wasn't their downfall, I mean 15 years later they had more debt than the stadium initially cost, despite doing better than anyone could have reasonably expected on the revenue front.
Just look at their most expensive transfers:
Huntelaar is the only one, who was a success and even he only had one truly great season and gradually turned into more and more of a problem afterwards. None of them generated at profit. The top three were complete disasters. They always kept their debt on barely manageable levels. Always spent money they hadn't actually earned yet on players that flopped and they also decided to invest €100m into their training ground, just as they were beginning to go up in flames.
It wasn't ALL the fault of the stadium, obviously. I never claimed it was. But it is a huge chunk of their liabilities that they, unlike Bayern, were not able to get rid of, and it is exemplary for the entire mismatch between ambition and reality that was so characteristic for the Schalke of that entire period. Huge ambitions, wanting to be one of the top fish in the pond, chucking a lot of money into unneccessary complex and expensive features.
Sure, if they actually managed to fulfill their ambitions and establish themselves as a consistent top three club, the stadium build might have actually gone down as the perfect move at the perfect time before costs went through the roof, similar as with Bayern. But they didn't, and it wasn't. It was yet another nail in their coffin. Again, not the only nail. But definitely one of them.