“WE’RE SCHEISSE AND WE KNOW WE ARE”

“Everything has an end, only the sausage has two,” or so goes an old German saying that’s still widely used today. Revered porcine products aside, Germans believe all things end eventually. Nothing lasts forever.

Fans of Schalke 04 and Hamburger SV will understand the sentiment better than most. Until recently, both were considered German football powerhouses – successful on the pitch, respected off it. Even rival supporters appreciate the traditions and values upheld by the two clubs.

And yet, the pair find themselves in the 2. Bundesliga, Germany’s second tier, this season. Schalke’s relegation in 2020-21 was among the most humiliating in top-flight history: 34 matches, three wins, 24 defeats and 86 goals conceded. They came within one match of equalling Tasmania Berlin’s infamous record of 31 consecutive games without a win, dating back to 1965-66. In tier two, they have found waiting for them Hamburg – by now a veteran of three seasons outside the Bundesliga.

So, how did these juggernauts, who have claimed 13 German championships between them, get here? To find out, FourFourTwo have travelled to Gelsenkirchen, a mining city in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, for the 2. Bundesliga season opener between the duo. Football is a soap opera, so it was inevitable Schalke vs Hamburg kicked things off.

With 20,000 fans in attendance for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, the sun-bathed Veltins-Arena looks a thing of beauty as FFT ambles out of the train station on a warm late-July evening.

“It’s wonderful to be back, even if it is in the second division,” Andreas Middeke of official Schalke supporter group Blau-Weiss 80, tells us pre-match, bratwurst in one hand and pint in the other. “The past few years have been a catastrophe, but here we are.”

“Schalke and Hamburg are massive teams,”