It was exactly 30 years ago when FC Schalke 04 faced seemingly insoluble problems – just like today. Bottom of the league table, a new coach, an overwhelmed board of directors and cash pockets that are so tight that relegation could even threaten them with falling into the amateur league.
It was a week to forget that FC Schalke 04 had to experience 30 years ago – and it drove the club into chaos. For a few weeks and months it was impossible to predict where the club would go. Even a crash into the Westphalia Amateur League was on the cards due to Schalke’s immense debts. In those dramatic days in October 1993, no one could even have imagined that this week would be the start of the revival of the royal blue dreams.
It all started with a home defeat against SC Freiburg and the fall to the bottom of the Bundesliga table. Schalke’s then coach Helmut Schulte could no longer be held back after this renewed sporting revelation. But the fans were not only mad at the coach, they also demanded consequences for the manager’s position. Rudi Assauer had only been back in office for almost six months and Schalke’s anger towards him was already great. The fans remembered Assauer’s first term in office and would have liked to see the manager vacate the chair together with the coach. At short notice there was even a scuffle with Assauer after the game against Freiburg – but Schalke’s live mascot, Charly Neumann, was able to calm the supporters down.
“Yes, I lied!”
In his distress, the manager asked his own players if they wanted Jörg Berger as their new coach. The coach, who fled the GDR in 1979, had only been released in Cologne in February and had already contacted Assauer. But when “ranissimo” presenter Jörg Wontorra asked him about this connection live on TV, Berger denied it. A lie that would stay with the coach for a long time, because Wontorra summarized the statement for the audience in one sentence: “Berger swore that he would not be Schulte’s successor.”
While the players complained against their former coach (“He treated me like the last asshole. It’s good that he’s gone,” Uwe Scherr), Schulte wrote nice farewell words on the board in the coaching cabin: “Dear Jörg! Good luck to my successor. Your predecessor!”. And Berger? He only made the whole story of his false vow worse by claiming that he never said the whole thing like that. But finally he gave in and admitted: “Yes, I lied!” The trappings of his start at Schalke could have gone better, but that was lost in those catastrophic days in the fall of 1993. After all, the week wasn’t over yet.
Lehmann’s legendary S-Bahn ride
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Just three days after his appointment, the new coach at Bayer Leverkusen received a memorable slap in his first game. Schalke went down 5-1, but the icing on the cake for this game came from future national goalkeeper Jens Lehmann. His legendary ride on the S-Bahn after being substituted at half-time has gone down in Bundesliga history. Crying, after this humiliation, Lehmann could no longer stand being alone in the dressing room and so – without being consulted – he simply fled the Haberland Stadium. The Schalke fans, on the other hand, were different: long after the game was over, they chanted the old classic “Such a day, as beautiful as today” with a healthy dose of cynicism. One might think that things couldn’t have gotten any worse – but that was far from the case.
Long-time President Günter Eichberg marked the end of this dramatic week. It was precisely in these terrible hours that he resigned from his obligation to his own supporters. The “Sun King”, as he was called, had saved Schalke from near financial collapse when he took office in January 1989, but now, almost four and a half years later, the situation was even more hopeless than it was back then. Over the years, Eichberg had not only been generous with the money he didn’t actually have, but had also taken on guarantees for Schalke, which he himself was no longer able to service due to problems in his clinic business. For the S04 this meant: If the financial situation was not improved as quickly as possible, relegation would have a clear consequence – license revocation and forced relegation to the Oberliga Westfalen. No wonder that a major German sports magazine back then asked the question of all questions: “Will there soon be no more Schalke?”
Berger’s scare tactics don’t work for Geraerts
Today we know that FC Schalke 04 emerged stronger from these difficult days. And that was primarily due to the sporting situation, because even though the Royal Blues were still bottom of the table after matchday 15 – little by little things improved under the new coach. The 3-1 victory over VfB Leipzig finally released positive energy again among the Schalke professionals. The double goalscorer Dieter Eckstein in particular seemed relaxed. He stood in front of the dressing room laughing and took a long drag on a cigarette: “At least now no one is complaining because the coach smokes himself!”
With shining eyes, he talked about his new coach’s special motivational practices. Berger tried to use the principle of fear with them, as Eckstein reported: “He told us how high the unemployment rate is in the area, that some of the unemployed are still scraping together money to see us play. They get 588.60 marks one childless unemployed person as the maximum rate per week. Remember: some of you too could be on the streets at the end of the season.” This method obviously worked back then. However, Schalke’s current coach Karel Geraerts will have to think about something else to finally get his players back on track.