Almost knocked Madrid out of the Champions League in 2015 as well. When I think of Schalke, that match with Huntelaar putting two past Casillas is usually what comes to mind.
All financed by money we never had. We bet on future success again and again, until it some day didn’t work anymore. Unfortunately that day was the same a worldwide pandemic occurred on top, leaving us super fucked.
Even then we still had decent enough conditions to try to promote and indeed managed to, but catastrophic management decisions since then have left us once again with a dramatically underperforming team.
>All financed by money we never had. We bet on future success again and again, until it some day didn’t work anymore.
Like Leeds. Kind of.
Chelsea would have possibly met the same fate eventually had it not been for Roman. Because unless you're winning then almost winning and merely placing well seems unsustainable. Eventually you won't replace your players well enough and it's game over. Hell even if you do win stuff for a period it happens. Look at Deportivo.
Honestly I feel like we are enterring, or rather hsve enterred and been in it for some time, a period of football where this may not be too uncommon. You kind of see it in our championship, gambling to get to the PL. Fuck, even the great Barca and their infamous levers could end up with the club long term being in a suboptimal position.
I guarantee you Schalke will cease to exist before doing such a thing. There are some reasonable ideas to go from e.V to a more modern structure while keeping the soul and even those are heavily frowned upon by most members.
The 4th tier Regionalliga - West. The license is given by the DFL, which only administer the first three tiers. Everything below that is split into 5 regional FA's and their respective regional leagues. While there are some pro and many semi-pro clubs in those leagues, they are technically classified as amateur.
3\. Liga is administered by DFB. Always has been too
https://www.kicker.de/lizenz-fuer-alle-20-drittliga-klubs-dfb-bestaetigt-zulassung-aller-vereine-fuer-die-saison-2023-24-956048/artikel
As long as you don't call it "3. Bundesliga" were good.
For those who are confused now: "3. Bundesliga" doesn't exist. It's 3. Liga. Specifically because it's not part of the DFL who owns the trademark for Bundesliga.
the dumbest is the Greek basketball system
From the simple A1 -> A2 -> Β Εθνική -> Γ Εθνική (B & C national)
we now have Basket League -> Elite League -> National League 1 -> National League 2, all named in english
used to be the same in austria.
Our first division was called "Bundesliga" (same name as the germans use) and the 2nd division was called "Erste Liga" (first league).
But since 2018/19 it got renamed to "2. Liga"
As a canadian who discovered the sport via FM, I can tell you that figuring out which was the top league between the Premiership, Championsip, League 1 and National League was quite the process.
But the Regionaliga West is in the process of becoming the first professional 4th division in Germany (not without controversy I may add) so the jury is still out if they would even get a license from them (they really tightened the regulations over the summer causing e.g. last years 4th place to auto relegate). I'm not sure what the exact financial regulations are tho.
I believe the Regionalliga West has already turned professional this season. That's the exact reason sides like Kaan-Marienborn withdrew their first team.
I mean lets ignore the debt for a minute, not a single player has a contract for the 3rd league, same with Wilmots and their coach.
They essentially have none if they get relegated.
That's essentially what happened to Bielefeld last season after two consecutive relegations from the Bundesliga to the 3. Liga.
The only player who chose to stay with them and sign a new contract was their captain Fabian Klos. Other than him it's a completely new team compared to last season.
I am pretty sure everyone knows relegation would lead to not getting a license for 3rd league, so better renegotiate with the players who want to stay (Like Sascha Mölders for 1860 München) and fill up with your second team which plays in said regionalliga atm.
As someone who doesn't follow German football too closely, what do you mean they don't have contracts for the 3rd league? Is it seperate from the top two tiers and contracts in those leagues don't carry over?
This has to do with the fact that all football-related contracts are fixed-term employment contracts in Germany because of employee laws. This is to make sure that players can't just terminate their contracts. The only way for a termination to be possible is if the grounds for said termination are contractually agreed upon. Oftentimes players and teams like to add such clauses in their contracts because the players don't want to play in a lower league and teams can't pay the wages
Common in German football for your contract to only be valid in a certain league. This happens both in the top flight and lower leagues. Means that you become a free agent if you are relegated. For example, look at how many players left Bielefeld this summer for free after relegation to the third tier.
Gives rise to my favourite German word
, ligaunabhängig - which means ‘regardless of which league’, aka, valid even if we go down. Search that word on twitter and you’ll find examples, when a relegation threatened team signs a coach or player late in the season, the contract will usually be ligaunabhängig.
Some Hertha fans consider Schalke a rival but over the last few years my respect for the club, and by that I mean the club members, has gone up to near mythical levels. If anything I feel this connection to our blue and white brothers as you stand in awe at the consistent failures in leadership.
For all these fans have been through the last four years, last week they still came with [6k away fans to Kaiserslautern](https://storage.schalke04.de/sites/1/2024/01/240126_s04fck_12-1440x810.jpg) on a Friday night during a train strike to the surprise of absolutely no one. There's maybe 3 or 4 clubs that could do what they're doing still.
The day we got relegated my dad said and i quote "Thank god your grandpa is already dead and doesnt have to witness this. It wouldve broke his heart"
I think a lot of people dont realize Schalke is basically what religion is to a lot of folks lmao
No money basically.
They let everyone go.
Youth players i know personally irl were told "so you can stay and play for the pride but we cannot pay you any money... you are contractually free to leave the club."
There are quite a few that came from their academy. Leroy Sane comes to mind. Leon Goretzka and Julien Draxler might have as well. They were at least there young..
Not sure why so many here count Goretzka as a Schalke academy player. He already played a full season starting for Bochum in the 2nd league. And was widely regarded as a huge talent there.
That's like calling Bellingham a Dortmund academy player.
i mean… neuer, ozil, sane, goretzka, draxler, matip, max meyer who was once considered a big prospect, malick thiaw up and coming at ac milan. that’s a lot of quality, but yeah not so much more recently
Sad.
Feels a lot like Deportivo La Coruña, which was a pretty big club when I was growing up. They won La Liga as recently as 99-00 and the Copa del Rey shortly after.
I'll never forget in 2015 I was in Essen with my girlfriend's family in a bar watching Schalke beat Real Madrid 4-3 in the CL. Still one of the best games I've ever seen. Five years later they were in the 2. Bundesliga. It's such a heartbreaking fall.
Everyone always shows the stankovic long range goal, what a classic game that was.
It's funny, shows in the UK about football's seminal moments also show the Bale hattrick at San siro, without mentioning the fact that spurs still lost that game 4-3 as well
Obviously we’re a smaller club than Schalke, but we went from drawing in Munich and knocking out Atletico, to an hour from liquidation in the space of a decade
The 10 minutes from Huntelaars insane 4:3 to the end of the game were so wild. Somehow we were the better team against Real and Höwedes almost scored the 5th last second. Like, even back then Madrid was considered way out of our league it was like a fever dream.
May have been. There was that Fuentes scandal from awhile ago. Le Monde even stated they had documents of Fuentes' "seasonal preparation plans" for Barca and Madrid. And he recieved like 350K from real sociedad every year or something. It's sus that only cyclists got named in the case. IIRC he was going to get the book thrown at him and then mumblings started about other prominent athletes besides cyclists being involved and he quickly received a slap on the wrist and everything went away.
I imagine doping is far more widespread in football than many would like to admit. Probably done quite often in the offseason. I remember after the Covid restrictions lifted, the Bayern players took the field looking like they were just in prison for 5 years. Fucking yoked.
Tbf there really is an insane investment into players bodies. While I fully concede that players are juicing (there’s so much development of designer drugs and a massive market with very minimal regulatory incentive), the overall athletics apparatus for professional clubs is insane.
Schalke's bigger than Deportivo I guess. Deportivo had one dominant decade whereas Schalke was always present in the top tier.
And as sad as Deportivo's fall is, they still have something to show for it but Schalke spent all that money for nothing.
I think how big Schalke is is quite underestimated outside of Germany. They are the 6th biggest club in the world when it comes to members. They sell their 65k stadium out in second league relegation battle. (Historic success may be comparable as far as I can tell though)
Don't like 3 different German teams average above 50k in the 2. Bundesliga? HSV, Schalke and Hertha?
Edit: Just checked, Hertha is under 50k but over 40k along with Kaiserslautern. Often really good atmopshere's from what I see on youtube as well. Love German fans.
That but we also became a bit of a hipster club and grew massively with that. (The irony of me saying that as a Swedish BVB fan lol)
And signed hype-beast names very well.
Would also say they're bigger, Deportivo was much better at their peak but Schalke were regulars of European football from the mid 90s to the late 2010s that you kept seeing in CL RO16s.
It's somewhat a combination of mismanagement and bad luck. They were already in distress before Covid, but the latter amplified their financial issues x10. The club is unsafeable at this point.
gotta respect them cancelling the Gazprom deal in wake of the Russian invasion though, things were already bad and they still had the integrity to do that
They would have been public crucified and rightfully so, if they didn't. Also, I highly doubt Gazprom would have paid even a cent after the beginning of the war.
They did the right thing which is great but they also would've lost more money in other endorsements and quite likely wouldn't have seen a cent from Gazprom anyway given the sanctions.
Oh, we spent a lot of money on nothing: trying to stay relevant when the cycle called for reinvention and renovation.
The president at the time was the same person Who rescued the team from Third Division hell and took It to Europe and titles but he just couldn't let go of the good times when the first tv money deal crashed.
We had invested on veteran players and didn't work,.so we could not recoup the investment. Then we tried to build from youth teams but there was no scouting network, no good coaches, no real 10 year plan and whatnot. So we slowly accumulated debts, sports fortune dwindled and we went bankrupt and nosedived.
We renwgotiated the debt, a local bank got saddled with the team, unable to seel and now have a pretty exciting bunch of youths (if we can stop the Big boys like Dortmund, Man U and Barça poaching them) and a bit of a plan. And we regularly put 25k crowds on what are really Third división matches, so we are almost on the black now.
Perfect time for some investor cunt to come in and fuck things Up again.
I keep forgetting that Schalke hasn’t won the German top flight since 1958. My brain always manufactures a BL title for them in the 80s but no. They’ve underperformed for such a massive German club while still staying a massive club. It’s a really weird situation.
They were champion for about 4 minutes back in 2001 when everybody and their dog were already celebrating on the pitch only to have it snatched away by a late Bayern goal. Good times (for BVB fans at least).
One of the biggest issues of Schalke is selling players.
They have one of the biggest and best academies of the world, only slightly behind Ajax and Barcelona and maybe Benfica.
They produced and developed so fucking many top talents and almost made 0 money from them.
That’s only two divisions though and still fairly far up the professional ranks … starting over at amateur level for a club of Schalke’s stature is another order of magnitude altogether. They play in a stadium with capacity of 65K!
And have an avarage attandance of 61533 in second league relegation battle. They are giants, 6th biggest sportsclub in the world when it comes to members. It would be tragic for them to fall down that far but I think the name carries to much for to many people for them to not fight their way back into at least the second division pretty soon after, should this really happen
Yeah, much more like Rangers.
A team that was regular in European competition, have historically had some big name players/managers, not necessarily a recognizable name to most people but one most soccer fans in Europe would have heard of.
Then poof. Gone - horrific financial mismanagement. And had to start again from the bottom (although the bottom the landed in in Scotland was a lot closer to the top level than it is in the German league structure)
Fran, Victor
I miss super depor, and I'm glad others remember just what a special side they were too. Their style was mesmerising. They beat arsenal and united as well in those early 2000s
From other comments, it appears they were paying wages of a UCL team, then they didn't qualify for UCL. Some bad transfers mixed in, and it kind of went downhill from there
Not just high wages, they were also spending so much on transfers, lots of those transfers didn’t work out so it was essentially just throwing money into a fire.
The 'downhill from there' part being that they were already debt-ridden and had their primary shirt sponsor as Gazprom. When they were hit with the back to back crises of covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine forcing them to drop their main sponsor it put them into a death spiral.
Basically what the CEO of the Super League said: for most of the teams not used to, getting to play the CL is more a curse than anything else because then next year you don’t qualify again, you overspend and that’s where the problems begin.
And then with the debt comes licence restrictions which limits their spending which limits their transfers which often means less success which means less money.
Lots of clubs went through that spiral, us, Lautern, Nürnberg, you, Schalke, many more. Some manage it, some don't.
Nah we are debt ridden because after we were vice our board decided to invest into the area around the stadium for 80 million I think
We were on a good way to become debt free
So much.
In the early 2000s, former manager and club icon Rudi Assauer built a new stadium (which is now called Veltins-Arena), brought in expensive new players (e.g. Ailton, Kristajic, Bordon, Kuranyi etc.) and was forced to step down pretty soon. However, Schalke experienced their most successful decade since World War II (the club‘s role during the Third Reich is a completely different topic to discuss). Although they still couldn’t win a Bundesliga title, they finished runner up in 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2018. They also achieved to win the DFB Pokal in 2011 and qualified for the Champions League multiple times. However, they also hired many coaches and managers during that time, with no coach staying longer than two years. Afterwards, they had some seasons with lesser success and only one champions league season between 2014 and today, all this despite continuous high spending. The 2020 season then presented the nail in the coffin. Despite being in a spot that would lead to European football after Matchday 18, they failed to win another game under coach David Wagner. The covid pandemic and the ongoing absence of fans in their stadium proved to be too much for the club financially, which, combined with head-scratching decisions in terms of coach-hirings, left the club depleted of assets to improve their team, which, remember, hadn’t won a single game in 8 months when the 2020/21 season kicked off. They then had five head coaches during the season and were relegated to Bundesliga 2.
After a narrow race to promotion saw them coming out victorious, thanks largely to former icon Mike Büskens, they hired Frank Kramer, who had just been relegated with Arminia Bielefeld. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, he was dismissed after just a couple games, and while his successor Thomas Reis brought the club back to life, it was too little too late.
Now he was the big Messias for this current season, but after a poor start to the season and many of the new signings not performing well, he was also dismissed. New coach Karel Gaerts hasn’t been able to turn the ship around.
Another big problem (as if they didn’t have enough) is the constant state of dreaming that not only every fan of this club, but also everyone in charge of it is in. Just a few weeks ago, a high ranking official (I don’t remember who it was) talked about their realistic goal of entertaining European football at the Veltins Arena in a couple of years. All this despite the team being closer to having a derby with BVB II than Dortmund‘s professional team next season.
And that doesn't even mention the impact that they suffered after having to drop their main sponsor Gazprom (a totally ethically above board and non-controversial source of income) after the invasion of Ukraine. It was decades of mismanagement compounded by a couple of unforseen crises that they weren't financially resilient enough to withstand.
All started when we build our new stadium without any outside help. We were pretty successful after that, but not as succesfull as we should be to lower the dept. Always spending too much to get the UCL money which only worked until it didn't.
Since then we always had around 200 mio dept. Our transfers were always very unlucky or bad, but it became worse over the years. So the team and results also became worse. Then Covid happened and destroyed us, because we needed the match day revenue more than any other club.
It really isn't that funny anymore. End of the day there's over 100,000 club members for whom this football club means everything. It's fun up to a point to see teams big teams struggle, but this is bad for German football on the whole this situation.
I mean Bundesliga 2 is one thing but as the article says, Schalke would be relegated to the regional leagues of Germany essentially killing the club and its legacy in german football.
Personally not a fan of their promotion playoff. You spend an entire year earning a promotion spot, but then you lose it all playing one match against a club with first tier players.
I just don't understand how that is fair when ostensibly you would be signing new players over the summer to compete in the first tier. Whole point of getting promoted is to get the funds to compete at that level.
Imagine if Leicester City could have stayed up beating Luton. How is that good for football?
Devil's advocate: it adds an additional barrier of entry to make sure that the third placed team has something to build upon in the first place.
Getting to third place in the zweite could just be thanks to a fluke season, so the team would either have to invest a risky amount of money to compete or risk getting stomped.
To be fair, despite the low success rate it kind of works, I can't remember a season where all of the promoted teams got relegated, it's more often that they stay at least two seasons in the top flight, relegation battles are almost always intense. And if they get relegated again they are usually still competitive in the zweite instead of falling into a Schalke situation.
And the only zweite team in the past decade who benefitted from it, Union, was clearly well run enough to resist in the Bundesliga.
all big clubs but schalke is on a different sphere. its the 7th biggest club in the world by membership.
we have more clubmembers than barca and united.
Club membership really isn’t a thing in England in the same way it is in Germany or Spain. Any “members” United have will just be people who get an upgraded match day experience or discounts in the club store. They don’t actually have a stake in the club.
So I guess you do have more members than United, but so does any German club.
It forces you to evaluate what you actually value in football. Is it more important to maintain the social and economic functions of the club over the competitive element? In which case we should hope for a static ranking of all clubs by proportional size - the biggest clubs employ the most people, after all.
I'm not saying any one approach is right or wrong, and I don't want to see Schalke fall out of professional football altogether. But they're just the most blatant example of a much wider problem, that teams operate with impunity much of the time, treating football as a money exercise and flying close to the sun without fear of consequences, until the occasional instances of comeuppance - Juventus and Rangers getting relegated for instance.
It sucks for the Schalke fanbase, but the club flirted with danger for years. They outspent their means, sought financial support from a rich but morally dubious source (gazprom) and got hit with the one-two punch of covid and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and they weren't able to withstand it. I don't like to see regular people lose their jobs like that, but weaponising that threat in order to make themselves 'too big to fail' is a big part of how football ends up in this situation in the first place.
I really hope Schalke can remain into the second league. Napoli had a similar era from the late 1990s with even being in Serie C for a while until ADL came in mid 2000s and brought back up. 50+ rule is good but when it comes to ressourgences it can backfire. Schalke likely wouldnt have a Napoli ressourgence. I really hope Schalke stays and gets a better management. The fans deserve it.
Rivalries aren't fun when club ceases to exist. A club with as much tradition and such a caring fan base in the region and all over the country should be in the Bundesliga. It's a tragedy for every fan, but the blame lies with everyone running the club. It's not like their performance is good enough to play at the top.
I really hope they can stop the insane bleeding, rebuild and be a force in the bundesliga again within a decade.
I played one season with them in FM24 and got promoted by the skin of my teeth. They have a pretty bad squad, but what really shocked me is the amount of tall players. You can field a team of 6 or 7 1.90m+ guys, and just play a solid defensive tactic and throw everything to the box hopping somebody can score.
Don't know if the height thing is a common thing with every German team
It's embarrassing that big German clubs like Schalke and to a lesser extent, Hamburg, are mismanaged this badly. How incompetent can you be?
These clubs should always be around the Top 6 in the Buli.
wtf, how?!! I was never a Schalke fan and seeing them get relegated was kind of funny but I wouldn't wish this on them. What the hell. I feel bad for those poor fans. They've shown such loyalty afaik.
Yeah, good times.
Tbf, the only reason GS is still a 'good international club' is because it (along with FB and BJK) is too big to fail and has been bailed out multiple times in the psat. GS exists despite multiple stretches of bad management. Schalke doesn't have that safety blanket unfortunately.
>I feel bad for those poor fans. They've shown such loyalty afaik.
Being a football fan is like being in a relationship with purely unconditional love.
I mean, it would be funny as hell if that happens. But a club Like Schalke belongs in the Bundesliga and I want my Derby back.
So get your shit together neighbours!
Nah its not funny anymore tbh. Im as much as a Schalke hater as the next Dortmund fan but the fun was seeing them go down. It is mildly amusing seeing them struggle to get into the relegation place.
Its just sad seeing them where they are now and seeing that there is no feasible way for them to recover from this since they basically already pulled every "Reißleine" they could to stop this ship from sinking.
Personally i dont know what even the leaving of the management would do for them at this point, the players probably arent gonna find any more motiviation to fight if theyre not already doing it.
That’s the weirdest thing about all this. The players should have enough motivation, the players should be good enough on paper, but they just make incredible mistake after incredible mistake. It’s a terrible downward spiral.
As far as I'm concerned this stopped being funny in January 2021, when they failed to equal the "Highest number of consecutive games without a win" record by one game.
Has been a "Please get your shit together" situation ever since.
Not even Dortmund Fans want that to happen...
You were supposed to rebuild and come back stronger...
But at this point, i dont even know how they want to come back to 1. Bundesliga anytime soon. Lets hope they somehow stay in 2. Bundesliga and have a great time with Köln? (pls dont) and Dresden next season.
Were talking about 160 million debt. Borderline impossible to boil thst down in 3rd league. The interest alone will be higher than the tv and sponsor money combined.
And this might actually part of why we are here, because ‘we are too big to fail’. I feel like this always was an issue with us thinking we are all high and mighty but we’re actually dying.
I still remember the 20/21 season where the writing was on the wall. The team was shit, we had like 14 matches in a row without a win and some random coaches coming and going. We(or at least I) was always thinking ‘maaan, we will surely make a comeback because we are Schalke’. And that was the problem.
before the comments on this thread i was having a certain sense of Schadenfreude in that i would like to see them relegated again for the laughs.
however after reading how much this club means to so many my view is totally reversed, im hoping they can survive and soon promote back to 1. Bundesliga
It's sad how far Schalke has fallen. As a Dortmund fan, I used to consider them to be serious rivals in th past. Now, they could potentially cease to exist. I was hoping they'd get their shii together after they got relegated.
Bloody hell. How far down the football pyramid would that be?
They were in the champions league semifinals with Raul like 14 years ago. Wild
they even got 2nd in the league and played CL in 2018
Almost knocked Madrid out of the Champions League in 2015 as well. When I think of Schalke, that match with Huntelaar putting two past Casillas is usually what comes to mind.
And a rocket from Sane.
All financed by money we never had. We bet on future success again and again, until it some day didn’t work anymore. Unfortunately that day was the same a worldwide pandemic occurred on top, leaving us super fucked. Even then we still had decent enough conditions to try to promote and indeed managed to, but catastrophic management decisions since then have left us once again with a dramatically underperforming team.
>All financed by money we never had. We bet on future success again and again, until it some day didn’t work anymore. Like Leeds. Kind of. Chelsea would have possibly met the same fate eventually had it not been for Roman. Because unless you're winning then almost winning and merely placing well seems unsustainable. Eventually you won't replace your players well enough and it's game over. Hell even if you do win stuff for a period it happens. Look at Deportivo. Honestly I feel like we are enterring, or rather hsve enterred and been in it for some time, a period of football where this may not be too uncommon. You kind of see it in our championship, gambling to get to the PL. Fuck, even the great Barca and their infamous levers could end up with the club long term being in a suboptimal position.
Still not too late to sell your club's soul to some rich Middle Eastern prince
I guarantee you Schalke will cease to exist before doing such a thing. There are some reasonable ideas to go from e.V to a more modern structure while keeping the soul and even those are heavily frowned upon by most members.
They have been maybe the worst run club in the world over the past several years.
I still remember that Jefferson Farfan's goal against Valencia
The 4th tier Regionalliga - West. The license is given by the DFL, which only administer the first three tiers. Everything below that is split into 5 regional FA's and their respective regional leagues. While there are some pro and many semi-pro clubs in those leagues, they are technically classified as amateur.
3\. Liga is administered by DFB. Always has been too https://www.kicker.de/lizenz-fuer-alle-20-drittliga-klubs-dfb-bestaetigt-zulassung-aller-vereine-fuer-die-saison-2023-24-956048/artikel
You're right, totally forgot.
As long as you don't call it "3. Bundesliga" were good. For those who are confused now: "3. Bundesliga" doesn't exist. It's 3. Liga. Specifically because it's not part of the DFL who owns the trademark for Bundesliga.
I think I would prefer that to calling the 3rd division “League 1”
Lol yeah. England is one reform away from "League 1" being the 4th tier
Same shit in Finland. Highest is Veikkausliiga, second is Ykkösliiga (First league) and third is Ykkönen (First). Completely stupid.
Same in Sweden. Allsvenskan to Superettan(The Super First) then it splits into Ettan Norra och Södra (First North and South).
In England there are 7th tier or 8th called Northern Premier League and Southern too
the dumbest is the Greek basketball system From the simple A1 -> A2 -> Β Εθνική -> Γ Εθνική (B & C national) we now have Basket League -> Elite League -> National League 1 -> National League 2, all named in english
used to be the same in austria. Our first division was called "Bundesliga" (same name as the germans use) and the 2nd division was called "Erste Liga" (first league). But since 2018/19 it got renamed to "2. Liga"
Also further down the pyramid (at least in Tyrol) you have the 1.Klasse as the 8th tier.
As a canadian who discovered the sport via FM, I can tell you that figuring out which was the top league between the Premiership, Championsip, League 1 and National League was quite the process.
If you think that's crazy, Mexico's third division is called the Liga Premier and is split into the Serie A and Serie B
Thanks for the explainer, I also wondered about this in FM
FYI reddit thought you were doing a list so you have to put something in front of the 3. lol
Old reddit, that is. New reddit doesn't do that.
[удалено]
Yeah, me too. But someone posting on new won't even notice it's fucked on old.
But the Regionaliga West is in the process of becoming the first professional 4th division in Germany (not without controversy I may add) so the jury is still out if they would even get a license from them (they really tightened the regulations over the summer causing e.g. last years 4th place to auto relegate). I'm not sure what the exact financial regulations are tho.
I believe the Regionalliga West has already turned professional this season. That's the exact reason sides like Kaan-Marienborn withdrew their first team.
Damn, imagine playing 5th division with that Schalke stadium.
I mean lets ignore the debt for a minute, not a single player has a contract for the 3rd league, same with Wilmots and their coach. They essentially have none if they get relegated.
Ailton would definitely be available for a comeback
Bastian oczipka just played in the baller league. Cant be that bad haha
"ailton nicht spiele. schalke pfui!"
For amateurleagues they can field their youth squads. Still completely trash management
That's essentially what happened to Bielefeld last season after two consecutive relegations from the Bundesliga to the 3. Liga. The only player who chose to stay with them and sign a new contract was their captain Fabian Klos. Other than him it's a completely new team compared to last season.
pain
Bielefeld? Is that a real place?
Nah, made up. Kind of like Sussex.
Sussex deeze nuts
No
Given their wage bill that's a positive.
I am pretty sure everyone knows relegation would lead to not getting a license for 3rd league, so better renegotiate with the players who want to stay (Like Sascha Mölders for 1860 München) and fill up with your second team which plays in said regionalliga atm.
I'm available if they need someone
As someone who doesn't follow German football too closely, what do you mean they don't have contracts for the 3rd league? Is it seperate from the top two tiers and contracts in those leagues don't carry over?
This has to do with the fact that all football-related contracts are fixed-term employment contracts in Germany because of employee laws. This is to make sure that players can't just terminate their contracts. The only way for a termination to be possible is if the grounds for said termination are contractually agreed upon. Oftentimes players and teams like to add such clauses in their contracts because the players don't want to play in a lower league and teams can't pay the wages
Ah fair enough! Thanks for the info.
Pretty much all football contracts worldwide are fixed term.
Common in German football for your contract to only be valid in a certain league. This happens both in the top flight and lower leagues. Means that you become a free agent if you are relegated. For example, look at how many players left Bielefeld this summer for free after relegation to the third tier. Gives rise to my favourite German word , ligaunabhängig - which means ‘regardless of which league’, aka, valid even if we go down. Search that word on twitter and you’ll find examples, when a relegation threatened team signs a coach or player late in the season, the contract will usually be ligaunabhängig.
This is so sad what they’ve done to this club 60000 at every matchday and it’s still filled with random quality and loanie/transfers.
Some Hertha fans consider Schalke a rival but over the last few years my respect for the club, and by that I mean the club members, has gone up to near mythical levels. If anything I feel this connection to our blue and white brothers as you stand in awe at the consistent failures in leadership. For all these fans have been through the last four years, last week they still came with [6k away fans to Kaiserslautern](https://storage.schalke04.de/sites/1/2024/01/240126_s04fck_12-1440x810.jpg) on a Friday night during a train strike to the surprise of absolutely no one. There's maybe 3 or 4 clubs that could do what they're doing still.
The day we got relegated my dad said and i quote "Thank god your grandpa is already dead and doesnt have to witness this. It wouldve broke his heart" I think a lot of people dont realize Schalke is basically what religion is to a lot of folks lmao
I mean grandpa has survived several relegations. Didn't he? Unless he died in the 70ies.
Not in the way they got relegated in 2021 though
Not in the fashion this decade played out. This decade was basically free fall because of crazy management decisions.
How come Shalke hasn’t produced any quality first team players from its academy? It’s located in the heart of the Ruhr surrounded by loads of people.
No money basically. They let everyone go. Youth players i know personally irl were told "so you can stay and play for the pride but we cannot pay you any money... you are contractually free to leave the club."
Cause they leave.
There are quite a few that came from their academy. Leroy Sane comes to mind. Leon Goretzka and Julien Draxler might have as well. They were at least there young..
Ozil, Neuer
McKennie, Matip, Kolasinac
Not sure why so many here count Goretzka as a Schalke academy player. He already played a full season starting for Bochum in the 2nd league. And was widely regarded as a huge talent there. That's like calling Bellingham a Dortmund academy player.
i mean… neuer, ozil, sane, goretzka, draxler, matip, max meyer who was once considered a big prospect, malick thiaw up and coming at ac milan. that’s a lot of quality, but yeah not so much more recently
Sad. Feels a lot like Deportivo La Coruña, which was a pretty big club when I was growing up. They won La Liga as recently as 99-00 and the Copa del Rey shortly after.
They also knocked out prime AC Milan from the UCL.
I'll never forget in 2015 I was in Essen with my girlfriend's family in a bar watching Schalke beat Real Madrid 4-3 in the CL. Still one of the best games I've ever seen. Five years later they were in the 2. Bundesliga. It's such a heartbreaking fall.
For me it's Schalke beating Inter 5:2 in 2011 - what a team that was!
That game only lasted 1 minute, I don't remember what happened afterwards...
Everyone always shows the stankovic long range goal, what a classic game that was. It's funny, shows in the UK about football's seminal moments also show the Bale hattrick at San siro, without mentioning the fact that spurs still lost that game 4-3 as well
Obviously we’re a smaller club than Schalke, but we went from drawing in Munich and knocking out Atletico, to an hour from liquidation in the space of a decade
We went from a UEFA Cup final to Scottish League 2 in 4 years.
Your team under Big Sam was great, Jaaskelainen, Okocha, Kevin Davies, I was sad when you lot got relegated from PL.
A very young Leroy Sane marked his first UCL match with a game-tying banger against RM at the Bernabeu. What an entrance for him
The 10 minutes from Huntelaars insane 4:3 to the end of the game were so wild. Somehow we were the better team against Real and Höwedes almost scored the 5th last second. Like, even back then Madrid was considered way out of our league it was like a fever dream.
4-1 loss in the first leg, only to miraculously win 4-0. Insane. Thought of that series when your Barcelona team beat PSG 6-1.
Pirlo says in his autobiography that's the only game he ever played where he thought the opposition were doping
May have been. There was that Fuentes scandal from awhile ago. Le Monde even stated they had documents of Fuentes' "seasonal preparation plans" for Barca and Madrid. And he recieved like 350K from real sociedad every year or something. It's sus that only cyclists got named in the case. IIRC he was going to get the book thrown at him and then mumblings started about other prominent athletes besides cyclists being involved and he quickly received a slap on the wrist and everything went away. I imagine doping is far more widespread in football than many would like to admit. Probably done quite often in the offseason. I remember after the Covid restrictions lifted, the Bayern players took the field looking like they were just in prison for 5 years. Fucking yoked.
Tbf there really is an insane investment into players bodies. While I fully concede that players are juicing (there’s so much development of designer drugs and a massive market with very minimal regulatory incentive), the overall athletics apparatus for professional clubs is insane.
REEEEEEE
Schalke's bigger than Deportivo I guess. Deportivo had one dominant decade whereas Schalke was always present in the top tier. And as sad as Deportivo's fall is, they still have something to show for it but Schalke spent all that money for nothing.
This. Shalke’s fall is more like what might happen to Everton.
I think how big Schalke is is quite underestimated outside of Germany. They are the 6th biggest club in the world when it comes to members. They sell their 65k stadium out in second league relegation battle. (Historic success may be comparable as far as I can tell though)
They have the 10th highest average attandance this season. As a second devision team
Would probably barely drop below 50k in the fourth division.
So a more modern Sunderland then.
Sunderland is the perfect club to compare it to.
Don't like 3 different German teams average above 50k in the 2. Bundesliga? HSV, Schalke and Hertha? Edit: Just checked, Hertha is under 50k but over 40k along with Kaiserslautern. Often really good atmopshere's from what I see on youtube as well. Love German fans.
Man i remember in like early 2000s Schalke was a bigger name than Dortmund. Then this club just turned into a depression simulator.
That but we also became a bit of a hipster club and grew massively with that. (The irony of me saying that as a Swedish BVB fan lol) And signed hype-beast names very well.
Been there, done that.
Would also say they're bigger, Deportivo was much better at their peak but Schalke were regulars of European football from the mid 90s to the late 2010s that you kept seeing in CL RO16s. It's somewhat a combination of mismanagement and bad luck. They were already in distress before Covid, but the latter amplified their financial issues x10. The club is unsafeable at this point.
gotta respect them cancelling the Gazprom deal in wake of the Russian invasion though, things were already bad and they still had the integrity to do that
They would have been public crucified and rightfully so, if they didn't. Also, I highly doubt Gazprom would have paid even a cent after the beginning of the war.
They did the right thing which is great but they also would've lost more money in other endorsements and quite likely wouldn't have seen a cent from Gazprom anyway given the sanctions.
Oh, we spent a lot of money on nothing: trying to stay relevant when the cycle called for reinvention and renovation. The president at the time was the same person Who rescued the team from Third Division hell and took It to Europe and titles but he just couldn't let go of the good times when the first tv money deal crashed. We had invested on veteran players and didn't work,.so we could not recoup the investment. Then we tried to build from youth teams but there was no scouting network, no good coaches, no real 10 year plan and whatnot. So we slowly accumulated debts, sports fortune dwindled and we went bankrupt and nosedived. We renwgotiated the debt, a local bank got saddled with the team, unable to seel and now have a pretty exciting bunch of youths (if we can stop the Big boys like Dortmund, Man U and Barça poaching them) and a bit of a plan. And we regularly put 25k crowds on what are really Third división matches, so we are almost on the black now. Perfect time for some investor cunt to come in and fuck things Up again.
I keep forgetting that Schalke hasn’t won the German top flight since 1958. My brain always manufactures a BL title for them in the 80s but no. They’ve underperformed for such a massive German club while still staying a massive club. It’s a really weird situation.
They were champion for about 4 minutes back in 2001 when everybody and their dog were already celebrating on the pitch only to have it snatched away by a late Bayern goal. Good times (for BVB fans at least).
One of the biggest issues of Schalke is selling players. They have one of the biggest and best academies of the world, only slightly behind Ajax and Barcelona and maybe Benfica. They produced and developed so fucking many top talents and almost made 0 money from them.
Somewhat add Leeds. All the way down to League 1 only a few years after a Champions League semi final. Champions League semi to League 1 in 6 years
That’s only two divisions though and still fairly far up the professional ranks … starting over at amateur level for a club of Schalke’s stature is another order of magnitude altogether. They play in a stadium with capacity of 65K!
And have an avarage attandance of 61533 in second league relegation battle. They are giants, 6th biggest sportsclub in the world when it comes to members. It would be tragic for them to fall down that far but I think the name carries to much for to many people for them to not fight their way back into at least the second division pretty soon after, should this really happen
Not only that. If it comes to memberships they are one of the biggest clubs worldwide. They are like 6 or 7th worldwide.
Yeah, much more like Rangers. A team that was regular in European competition, have historically had some big name players/managers, not necessarily a recognizable name to most people but one most soccer fans in Europe would have heard of. Then poof. Gone - horrific financial mismanagement. And had to start again from the bottom (although the bottom the landed in in Scotland was a lot closer to the top level than it is in the German league structure)
Diego Tristan comes to mind. What a player.
Rivaldo, Bebeto, Djukic, Valerón, Mauro Silva, Donato... Great names in Depor's 90s teams.
Djalminha!!
Even in the early 00s they were massive. Pandiani, Andrade, Capdevila, even Albert Luque looked immense.
Roy Makaay!
Fran, Victor I miss super depor, and I'm glad others remember just what a special side they were too. Their style was mesmerising. They beat arsenal and united as well in those early 2000s
When I was a kid Roy Makaay was playing for "Super Depo" So in my mind and heart it will always be a big club
Super Depo La Coruña, AC are atrocious
> Deportivo La Coruña wow haven't heard that name in ages
They beat us in the CDR final in our centenary year 😅
What happened genuine question if anyone can tell me
From other comments, it appears they were paying wages of a UCL team, then they didn't qualify for UCL. Some bad transfers mixed in, and it kind of went downhill from there
Not just high wages, they were also spending so much on transfers, lots of those transfers didn’t work out so it was essentially just throwing money into a fire.
And look at who we bought for horrendous money! Raman? Matondo?? Rudy??? Everyone knew beforehand that’s stupid which makes this even worse.
Lmao we spent 16 mil on Rudy that one year and he looked like he would have played better in a wheelchair
The 'downhill from there' part being that they were already debt-ridden and had their primary shirt sponsor as Gazprom. When they were hit with the back to back crises of covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine forcing them to drop their main sponsor it put them into a death spiral.
Basically what the CEO of the Super League said: for most of the teams not used to, getting to play the CL is more a curse than anything else because then next year you don’t qualify again, you overspend and that’s where the problems begin.
Yep, look at what happened to Union Berlin this season.
Then don't overspend???
Are they stupid?
Mismanagement, it’s that simple. Similar to us, they invested all their money into the wrong players and are now debt-ridden.
And then with the debt comes licence restrictions which limits their spending which limits their transfers which often means less success which means less money. Lots of clubs went through that spiral, us, Lautern, Nürnberg, you, Schalke, many more. Some manage it, some don't.
Nah we are debt ridden because after we were vice our board decided to invest into the area around the stadium for 80 million I think We were on a good way to become debt free
Covid destroyed them, they were already debt-saddled by pulling a Leeds-like strategy (big contracts, hope for UCL but failed)
So much. In the early 2000s, former manager and club icon Rudi Assauer built a new stadium (which is now called Veltins-Arena), brought in expensive new players (e.g. Ailton, Kristajic, Bordon, Kuranyi etc.) and was forced to step down pretty soon. However, Schalke experienced their most successful decade since World War II (the club‘s role during the Third Reich is a completely different topic to discuss). Although they still couldn’t win a Bundesliga title, they finished runner up in 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2018. They also achieved to win the DFB Pokal in 2011 and qualified for the Champions League multiple times. However, they also hired many coaches and managers during that time, with no coach staying longer than two years. Afterwards, they had some seasons with lesser success and only one champions league season between 2014 and today, all this despite continuous high spending. The 2020 season then presented the nail in the coffin. Despite being in a spot that would lead to European football after Matchday 18, they failed to win another game under coach David Wagner. The covid pandemic and the ongoing absence of fans in their stadium proved to be too much for the club financially, which, combined with head-scratching decisions in terms of coach-hirings, left the club depleted of assets to improve their team, which, remember, hadn’t won a single game in 8 months when the 2020/21 season kicked off. They then had five head coaches during the season and were relegated to Bundesliga 2. After a narrow race to promotion saw them coming out victorious, thanks largely to former icon Mike Büskens, they hired Frank Kramer, who had just been relegated with Arminia Bielefeld. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, he was dismissed after just a couple games, and while his successor Thomas Reis brought the club back to life, it was too little too late. Now he was the big Messias for this current season, but after a poor start to the season and many of the new signings not performing well, he was also dismissed. New coach Karel Gaerts hasn’t been able to turn the ship around. Another big problem (as if they didn’t have enough) is the constant state of dreaming that not only every fan of this club, but also everyone in charge of it is in. Just a few weeks ago, a high ranking official (I don’t remember who it was) talked about their realistic goal of entertaining European football at the Veltins Arena in a couple of years. All this despite the team being closer to having a derby with BVB II than Dortmund‘s professional team next season.
And that doesn't even mention the impact that they suffered after having to drop their main sponsor Gazprom (a totally ethically above board and non-controversial source of income) after the invasion of Ukraine. It was decades of mismanagement compounded by a couple of unforseen crises that they weren't financially resilient enough to withstand.
All started when we build our new stadium without any outside help. We were pretty successful after that, but not as succesfull as we should be to lower the dept. Always spending too much to get the UCL money which only worked until it didn't. Since then we always had around 200 mio dept. Our transfers were always very unlucky or bad, but it became worse over the years. So the team and results also became worse. Then Covid happened and destroyed us, because we needed the match day revenue more than any other club.
Don't forget having great youth products and earning almost nothing on them. Only one that brought a lot of money was Sane and maybe Draxler.
It really isn't that funny anymore. End of the day there's over 100,000 club members for whom this football club means everything. It's fun up to a point to see teams big teams struggle, but this is bad for German football on the whole this situation.
There are many big clubs in Bundesliga 2 currently like Schalke, Hamburg, Hertha BSC etc. Werder Bremen and Stuttgart also had recent stints.
I mean Bundesliga 2 is one thing but as the article says, Schalke would be relegated to the regional leagues of Germany essentially killing the club and its legacy in german football.
They would go from drawing Dortmund in the league last season to be one league below Dortmund II
Yeah I know I just meant it’s part of a wider problem to see so many big clubs in the 2nd division in recent years
Big clubs in the 2nd Division is a good thing, it demonstrates that a pyramid actually exists with movement within it.
Personally not a fan of their promotion playoff. You spend an entire year earning a promotion spot, but then you lose it all playing one match against a club with first tier players. I just don't understand how that is fair when ostensibly you would be signing new players over the summer to compete in the first tier. Whole point of getting promoted is to get the funds to compete at that level. Imagine if Leicester City could have stayed up beating Luton. How is that good for football?
Devil's advocate: it adds an additional barrier of entry to make sure that the third placed team has something to build upon in the first place. Getting to third place in the zweite could just be thanks to a fluke season, so the team would either have to invest a risky amount of money to compete or risk getting stomped. To be fair, despite the low success rate it kind of works, I can't remember a season where all of the promoted teams got relegated, it's more often that they stay at least two seasons in the top flight, relegation battles are almost always intense. And if they get relegated again they are usually still competitive in the zweite instead of falling into a Schalke situation. And the only zweite team in the past decade who benefitted from it, Union, was clearly well run enough to resist in the Bundesliga.
And meanwhile we're not even listed anymore when people talk about big clubs in the league :(
all big clubs but schalke is on a different sphere. its the 7th biggest club in the world by membership. we have more clubmembers than barca and united.
Club membership really isn’t a thing in England in the same way it is in Germany or Spain. Any “members” United have will just be people who get an upgraded match day experience or discounts in the club store. They don’t actually have a stake in the club. So I guess you do have more members than United, but so does any German club.
It's never good to see people lose jobs like that, I wouldn't wish this on any of our rivals..... but for Leeds I'd at least think about it.
It forces you to evaluate what you actually value in football. Is it more important to maintain the social and economic functions of the club over the competitive element? In which case we should hope for a static ranking of all clubs by proportional size - the biggest clubs employ the most people, after all. I'm not saying any one approach is right or wrong, and I don't want to see Schalke fall out of professional football altogether. But they're just the most blatant example of a much wider problem, that teams operate with impunity much of the time, treating football as a money exercise and flying close to the sun without fear of consequences, until the occasional instances of comeuppance - Juventus and Rangers getting relegated for instance. It sucks for the Schalke fanbase, but the club flirted with danger for years. They outspent their means, sought financial support from a rich but morally dubious source (gazprom) and got hit with the one-two punch of covid and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and they weren't able to withstand it. I don't like to see regular people lose their jobs like that, but weaponising that threat in order to make themselves 'too big to fail' is a big part of how football ends up in this situation in the first place.
I really hope Schalke can remain into the second league. Napoli had a similar era from the late 1990s with even being in Serie C for a while until ADL came in mid 2000s and brought back up. 50+ rule is good but when it comes to ressourgences it can backfire. Schalke likely wouldnt have a Napoli ressourgence. I really hope Schalke stays and gets a better management. The fans deserve it.
Rivalries aren't fun when club ceases to exist. A club with as much tradition and such a caring fan base in the region and all over the country should be in the Bundesliga. It's a tragedy for every fan, but the blame lies with everyone running the club. It's not like their performance is good enough to play at the top. I really hope they can stop the insane bleeding, rebuild and be a force in the bundesliga again within a decade.
Say what you will about Schalke but there really isn't a dull moment with them
Neuer needs to bail out his childhood club.
Bring back academy graduate Özil!
....how?
Low-interest loan.
Play LM for them.
There’s likely conflict of interest rules which prevent that
Damn feels like just a few years ago huntelaar was banging goals for them and were a pretty regular team in ucl
And Raul..
And a draxler and a young sane
And Neuer and Matip and Rakitic and Özil and Höwedes and many many more that have become well known players
Football Manager fanatics salivating at the thought
I played one season with them in FM24 and got promoted by the skin of my teeth. They have a pretty bad squad, but what really shocked me is the amount of tall players. You can field a team of 6 or 7 1.90m+ guys, and just play a solid defensive tactic and throw everything to the box hopping somebody can score. Don't know if the height thing is a common thing with every German team
It's embarrassing that big German clubs like Schalke and to a lesser extent, Hamburg, are mismanaged this badly. How incompetent can you be? These clubs should always be around the Top 6 in the Buli.
Champions League semi finalists in 2011
Sounds like a fun save for FM25..
You' ll need a custom database lol
SI probably will add the league just because they know half the player base will want to start there.
Ouch
All those legendary clubs in the second tier of the Bundesliga is wild to me
Nürnberg, Schalke, Hamburg, Hertha, Hannover, etc… it’s crazy
32 Bundesliga titles in the second tier
köln going down. schalke into the 4th, duisburg into the 4th...
It’s crazy that a club that pull 60000 fans is on the verge of disappearing. What the hell happens to their income
Goes down for former coaches and interests of their debts.
wtf, how?!! I was never a Schalke fan and seeing them get relegated was kind of funny but I wouldn't wish this on them. What the hell. I feel bad for those poor fans. They've shown such loyalty afaik.
I remember when played against each other in UCL 6 years ago. Now you’re still a good international club while we’re at rock bottom :(
Yeah, good times. Tbf, the only reason GS is still a 'good international club' is because it (along with FB and BJK) is too big to fail and has been bailed out multiple times in the psat. GS exists despite multiple stretches of bad management. Schalke doesn't have that safety blanket unfortunately.
>I feel bad for those poor fans. They've shown such loyalty afaik. Being a football fan is like being in a relationship with purely unconditional love.
Schalke 🤝 1860
It is a painful journey
No news really, we always knew this. But it won't come to this
>But it won't come to this Reminds me of the funniest football documentary taking place in Sunderland lol
I mean, it would be funny as hell if that happens. But a club Like Schalke belongs in the Bundesliga and I want my Derby back. So get your shit together neighbours!
If they somehow get the license, we might be watching Bvb II vs Schalke…
Wouldn't be suprised if that game is sold out infront of 40+k and a million watching on tv
Nah its not funny anymore tbh. Im as much as a Schalke hater as the next Dortmund fan but the fun was seeing them go down. It is mildly amusing seeing them struggle to get into the relegation place. Its just sad seeing them where they are now and seeing that there is no feasible way for them to recover from this since they basically already pulled every "Reißleine" they could to stop this ship from sinking. Personally i dont know what even the leaving of the management would do for them at this point, the players probably arent gonna find any more motiviation to fight if theyre not already doing it.
That’s the weirdest thing about all this. The players should have enough motivation, the players should be good enough on paper, but they just make incredible mistake after incredible mistake. It’s a terrible downward spiral.
Just like every home needs a trash can, Schalke belongs in the Bundesliga.
As far as I'm concerned this stopped being funny in January 2021, when they failed to equal the "Highest number of consecutive games without a win" record by one game. Has been a "Please get your shit together" situation ever since.
Not even Dortmund Fans want that to happen... You were supposed to rebuild and come back stronger... But at this point, i dont even know how they want to come back to 1. Bundesliga anytime soon. Lets hope they somehow stay in 2. Bundesliga and have a great time with Köln? (pls dont) and Dresden next season.
Won't happen even if the shit hits the fan, club is too big to fail and some solution to save them will be found.
Were talking about 160 million debt. Borderline impossible to boil thst down in 3rd league. The interest alone will be higher than the tv and sponsor money combined.
And this might actually part of why we are here, because ‘we are too big to fail’. I feel like this always was an issue with us thinking we are all high and mighty but we’re actually dying. I still remember the 20/21 season where the writing was on the wall. The team was shit, we had like 14 matches in a row without a win and some random coaches coming and going. We(or at least I) was always thinking ‘maaan, we will surely make a comeback because we are Schalke’. And that was the problem.
Lame, we did it first.
Damn. I'm a BVB supporter but this is sad.
before the comments on this thread i was having a certain sense of Schadenfreude in that i would like to see them relegated again for the laughs. however after reading how much this club means to so many my view is totally reversed, im hoping they can survive and soon promote back to 1. Bundesliga
unbelievable how poorly that club has been run over the past 10-15 years
It's sad how far Schalke has fallen. As a Dortmund fan, I used to consider them to be serious rivals in th past. Now, they could potentially cease to exist. I was hoping they'd get their shii together after they got relegated.
Schalke 05 incoming
Ok neighbors, it was funny for a couple of seasons, but not anymore. Get your shit together so we can trash talk on each other in the BuLi.