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Since Saturday, millions of Germans have felt as bloodless as Sky expert Lothar Matthäus.
He almost needed consolation when, in his funeral speech after the Ruhr derby, he revealed emotionally: "I will miss Schalke too." His grief sounded plausible, but was not covered by pure reason.
As an expert, why does he miss this kick?
The Schalke are poor last, with a few poor points, and in the 0: 4 against Dortmund, says Matthäus, they were now completely "terribly bad, that was fearful football".
Why is he missing this next year?
Answer: Schalke is Schalke.
Schalke is not Mainz 05 or Arminia Bielefeld.
When they dismount, they don't have much to expect on the tombstone, the British, with their dubious humor, like to engrave the sentence in such cases: "Here reads John Small and that is all".
The little ones are quickly buried and forgotten the next day, while the football crowd is already laying down flowers for the relegated Schalke, lighting candles and holding vigils.
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Germany mourns inconsolable.
“I have pity”, admitted Bayern boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in the ZDF “Sportstudio”, and even Marco Reus, the BVB sniper from the field post number vis-à-vis, is already missing “the explosiveness and that” in his thoughts on the future Fire from the Derby ”.
The Schalke team were priceless
Is there life after Schalke?
No, no and no, fear the ultras there too.
Around two hundred fans wanted to storm the Veltins Arena after the derby flop, and they would probably have thrown themselves headlong from the fence.
Even before the game, reports "Bild", a few courageous people had marched into "Heiner's Parkhotel", apparently with the intention of using a mallet to teach the players the right tactics in the team meeting.
In order to save Schalke, the fans blow to storm the Capitol if necessary - when the presenter Carmen Thomas once said “Schalke 05” in the “Sportstudio”, she was immediately mentally burned as a witch on a Gelsenkirchen stake.
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Schalke leaves no one indifferent.
When Nürnberg was relegated, or Kaiserslautern and VfB, it was coped well nationwide, and when HSV got hit, many felt sorry for Uwe Seeler, but the rest said: The main thing is that Schalke does not relegate.
We journalists in particular think that way.
We are often the coldest dog snouts and ready to scorn and mockery when a club is relegated - but we now have to be supported with our last words of condolence about Schalke.
The Schalke team have always been good to us, to be precise, even as priceless as Uli Hoeneß, and their descent will be the worst day for us since the Bayern maker left.
For us media, both were the icing on the cake for decades, every flatulence that escaped them increased the circulation and the audience rating or triggered a firework of clicks.
If we just think of the day when Hoeneß was released again, the accompanying "live ticker" in a major German newspaper remains unforgettable - here is a short excerpt:
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9.40 a.m.: A six-member chapel moves to the Hoeneß-Villa. The musicians play Bavarian folk music and are treated to a white sausage breakfast.
10:22 am: Three cases of beer are delivered to Hoeneß's house. Outside it is just over zero degrees with snowfall.
11.13 a.m.: The chapel is leaving. Conductor Weber feeds his pigs in the stable.
Around 4 p.m., Uli and his wife Susi lay down for an afternoon nap.
5 p.m .: The house is in the dark. No light in the rooms. The long day of freedom comes to an end for Uli Hoeneß.
Uli Hoeneß's house high above the Tegernsee in Bad Wiessee (Upper Bavaria)
Source: pa / dpa / Frank Mächler
It was always the same with Schalke.
Nothing went unmentioned, nothing unread.
If necessary, the question of who dangles sloppily on the hook, the Schalke players in the table or the halves of pigs in the slaughterhouse of their ex-boss Clemens Tönnies was discussed.
With Bayern, Rummenigge can tell as much about vaccination as he wants or give lectures at press conferences about the constitution and the dignity of footballers, he never gets close to Tönnies when he is looking forward to the day when “the Africans stop chopping down trees and producing children when it's dark ”.
Thank you, we journalists say, clap each other on the thighs with a roar and hit the keys.
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Schalke is Schalke.
Ex-national player Helmut Kremers walked innocently into the annual general meeting, gave a teasing speech with a perky swipe at the Dortmunders (“We didn't even have to change for them”) and became a “Helmut, Helmut” chorus on the spot President elected.
Scorers have always been different at Schalke.
Bayern have their ordinary Lewandowski, while you can read about a Schalke bomber in Wikipedia: "Willi Kraus (* May 1, 1943; † October 19, 2008) was a German football player and bank robber." He's not only in the Bundesliga Fear and horror, but also a supermarket and the Oldenburgische Bank in Bramsche.
A life without the Schalke?
Not even Marco Reus, the enemy from Dortmund, wants to imagine that.
"If I could vote," Reus said on Saturday, "I would leave them in."
Namely in the Bundesliga.
There and nowhere else they belong.
German football recognized this crystal clear in the 1964/65 season.
Schalke were the last to be relegated at the time, but the DFB quickly threw Hertha BSC out due to financial irregularities, and at an extraordinary Bundestag in Barsighausen, the league quickly increased from 16 to 18 teams, and Schalke was still there.
Since Saturday it's high time for a new Barsinghausen.
Throws Hertha BSC out again and increases the league to 20 clubs - but do something as soon as possible!
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