Schalke 04: the club that were champions for four minutes and are still called the champions of the hearts

Look back at the biggest moments in Schalke 04 history and you keep ending up at two dates. The first is May 1997, when the club from Gelsenkirchen won the UEFA Cup. The second is 19 May 2001, the afternoon on which Schalke believed for four minutes and 38 seconds that they were German champions. This season's numbers are on the Schalke 04 club page, and here is the story behind them.

Schalke were founded on 4 May 1904 as Westfalia Schalke, in a mining district at the heart of the Ruhr. The club have won seven German championships, in 1934, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1940, 1942 and 1958. All of them came before the Bundesliga existed in 1963. Ever since, the league title has been an obsession.

In the 1990s the club came back strongly under coach Huub Stevens. In the 1997 UEFA Cup final Schalke won the first leg at home 1-0 through a Marc Wilmots goal. Inter won the return in Milan by the same score after a strike from Iván Zamorano, which sent the tie to penalties. Schalke took the shoot-out 4-1, and the side went down in history as the Eurofighters.

Then came 2001. On the final day Bayern Munich led by three points but had a worse goal difference. Schalke had to beat Unterhaching at home and hope that Bayern lost at Hamburger SV. Schalke won 5-3. Because Sergej Barbarez scored for Hamburg in the 90th minute to make it 1-0, the whole stadium celebrated the title. It lasted until the first pictures from Hamburg appeared on the big screen and the party was cut short.

In Hamburg, referee Markus Merk had awarded Bayern an indirect free kick after a back-pass was picked up by the goalkeeper. Captain Stefan Effenberg left the shot to Patrik Andersson, who had never scored for Bayern. He scored: 1-1, and Bayern were champions. The final table read 63 points for Bayern against 62 for Schalke, even though Schalke had the better goal difference (+30 against +25). The newspaper Bild called Schalke the Meister der Herzen, the champions of the hearts. Four days later Bayern won the Champions League.

The years after were up and down. Schalke won the DFB-Pokal in 2001 and 2002 and reached the Champions League semi-finals in 2011. Relegations followed in 2021 and 2023. On 2 May 2026 the club went back up to the Bundesliga as winners of the 2. Bundesliga.

This season, after four rounds, Schalke are 11th with five points from one win, two draws and one defeat, with three goals scored and four conceded. They held Bayern to 0-0 at home and won 3-1 at Union Berlin. On Sunday they travel to SC Freiburg, who sit third. The best DT points so far belong to defenders: Timo Becker has 45 points (an average of 11.25), Robin Gosens has 43 including one goal, and goalkeeper Loris Karius has 38. For DreamTeam11 managers, Schalke is mainly interesting at the back. If you want to build a team with Bundesliga players, you can create a free account.

Which near miss do you think is the most painful in German football history, and could Schalke really have done anything differently in 2001?