Anyone who has followed German football in recent years will know that Schalke are not only a firm part of the furniture, but also the upper echelons of the game in the country.
A Bundesliga club for 30 consecutive years from 1991-2021, the Royal Blues also played in Europe every season bar one from 2001-02 through to 2018-19.
During their time competing across the continent, they reached the Champions League proper in seven of those 16 campaigns – and even reached the semi-final in 2010-11 – before losing to Manchester United.
Amid Bayern Munich’s long-standing monopoly of German football, which has seen them win Bundesliga for 10 consecutive seasons, it is actually Schalke – who view themselves among rivals Borussia Dortmund as the ‘best of the rest’ – that have regularly come close to challenging the Bavarian giants.
Between 2011 and 2018, Schalke finished 3rd, 4th, 3rd, 6th, 5th, 10th and then 2nd.
Schalke are rock bottom of Bundesliga and are on course for yet another relegation this term
It is far cry from when they were a real force in Germany and regularly qualified for the Champions League, with the Royal Blues facing Man United in the semi-finals 12 years ago
Schalke have won just three games after they were promoted back to the top flight last year
The squad that guided them to a memorable second place finish included talents such as Leon Goretzka, Weston McKennie, Yevhen Konoplyanka and Thilo Kehrer – players who have all gone on to enjoy impressive careers around Europe’s top leagues.
However, despite being one of the best sides in Germany over recent decades, the picture has dramatically imploded for Schalke ever since that second place finish.
In the last two years they finished 14th and 12th as a rot began to set in, with a chaotic 2020-21 campaign which saw the club go through four permanent managers ending in their first relegation in 30 years.
The drop to Bundesliga 2 was followed by Schalke supporters rioting in protest at the direction of the club.
They bounced back last season by winning the second division, but fans who hoped this was just a blip will be saddened, as Schalke are currently rock bottom of the German top flight having accumulated just 16 points from 22 games and look primed for yet another relegation.
Schalke are a shadow of their former selves having also been plunged deep into financial crisis by Covid-19 and then Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the ending of a sponsorship deal with Russian energy company Gazprom causing a further dent in their finances.
Several bad decisions over the years have seen the club lurch from crisis-to-crisis and fall into the dreadful position they now find themselves in.
Those in Germany have traced the problems back to February 2016 when Christian Heidel – widely known for developing managers such as Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel at Mainz and helping the club to punch above its weight – joined as sporting director.
Big plans were in place to build Schalke – who are known as one of Germany’s biggest talent-production factories with big-money sales of players such as Julian Draxler, Manuel Neuer, Leroy Sane and Kehrer raising around £150m over the years – further on from their progress both domestically and in European competitions.
Under Heidel Schalke spent huge sums of money on players such as Breel Embolo (£23.5m) Nabil Bentaleb (£17m) and Sebastian Rudy (£14.1m), but all three failed to have much of an impact, while Goretzka also left on a free transfer to join Bayern in 2018.
The club also committed to heavy investment in infrastructure with a reported £88.5m upgrade on their training ground.
A ruthless approach to managers and staff members accompanied this, with Heidel sacked in 2019 when results started to slip.
The club was known for producing several talented young German players like Leroy Sane (left) and Manuel Neuer (right), but they have made several bad recruitment decisions recently
David Wagner was the first of four managers for Schalke during their dismal 2020-21 campaign
Their relegation was followed by fan protests at the way the club was being run by the board
Schalke have gone through 10 permanent or caretaker managers over the past three years, which has only added to the instability at the club.
By 2019, they had racked up around £177m worth of debts, meaning heading into the 2019-20 campaign the club was reliant on success on the pitch to bring money in.
Things started brilliantly when former Huddersfield Town and current Norwich City manager David Wagner had them third in December.
However, Schalke’s form fell off a cliff and they failed to win in 16 league games, while the biggest of all disasters for the club – Covid-19 – struck.
This ravaged their finances and they had no fall-back, with Schalke’s debts beginning to spiral out of control.
It even got to the stage where fans asked for refunds on their season tickets when the remaining part of the season was played behind closed doors, yet the club reportedly said they would only repay supporters who could physically prove they needed the money.
The negative momentum on and off the pitch continued into the following season, with Schalke unable to strengthen their squad due to economic limits, while they just couldn’t shake off the losing mentality that had developed.
The Royal Blues were thrashed 8-0 in their opening game of the campaign by Bayern and Wagner was sacked after three damaging losses saw a total of 15 goals conceded and just one scored.
Several key players such as Weston McKennie had to be moved on due to cost-cutting and Schalke were left with an unbalanced and unstable squad.
Wagner was followed by Manuel Baum and Christian Gross in being sacked from the dugout, before Dimitrios Grammozis saw out the season.
No one was able to turn around the sinking ship with the club seemingly in a state of flux waiting for their inevitable relegation to be confirmed.
The culmination of disastrous finances, an unstable ownership, a deteriorating squad and a complete lack of structure at management level all proved to be too much to combine with the effects of the pandemic.
Schalke lost 24 of their 34 games and won just three, finishing 19 points from safety in a dreadful year for the club.
While they bounced back in 2021-22, winning the Bundesliga 2 after a superb late run of form following the sacking of Grammozis in March last year, things got even worse off the pitch with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February.
The club cut its ties with its main sponsor – Russian energy giant Gazprom – ending a deal worth a reported £13.3m per season, which plunged their finances into dire straits.
Despite a hugely successful season, the club were unable to retain key players like Ko Itakura – who starred for Japan at the World Cup – for this campaign, leading to another miserable year in the top flight.
This has not been helped by a further lack of stability, with Frank Kramer – who only arrived as boss in the summer – sacked after just 10 matches, while sporting director Rouven Schroder also left the club soon after.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war has plunged Schalke into serious financial trouble, with the German side abandoning their sponsorship with Russian company Gazprom
Things have improved under Thomas Reis, but they face a tough challenge to avoid relegation
Things have improved under Thomas Reis with the club picking up seven points from their last five games, but it still looks a tough task to stay up this season.
Perhaps most pertinently, back in 2019 Schalke were ranked by Forbes as the 14th-richest football club in the world – with a value of £604.5m.
However, as of last year the club was no longer in the top 20 teams worldwide for revenue or value.
A combination of poor recruitment, strategic instability and the club’s inability to financially deal with the Covid-19 pandemic has created the perfect storm for a former high-flying Bundesliga side diminishing as a force both on and off-the-pitch.