Club World Cup-Tumb is hope

“The future is hope, and from kindness people gave people the time that he lives in the expectation.” Thomas Mann’s dictum is highly true for the suffering supporters of the battered FC Schalke 04. The last championship was almost 70 years ago and the vain hope of the true fan for the eighth grip for the so -called salad bowl is not part of it. A glowing life in Tumber expectation loop, cooled since the recent descent into the basement of the 2nd league.

Like the wild bee, the “royal blue” sucks its confidence from statistical jugglals from the rapeseed yellow of the rapeseed: German No. 1 among the away drivers in the past season. 7365 unwaverable pilgrimage per away match through the republic. At home, the club is even in position 11 across Europe with an average of 61 639 Arena visitors, directly behind West Ham United and in front of Tottenham Hotspur. If nothing really countable can be shown, loyalty pays off, liturgy becomes. And the more violent the city of Gelsenkirchen groans in the neoliberal strangle, the more firm people stand together. Not only in the north curve.

Does anyone know the name of the current trainer? In the past, the abbreviation MM stood for Max Merkel, now it stands for Miron Muslic. The number of soccer teachers, which was haunted early on Schalke, is unmanageable. The fan clings to rare highlights such as winning the UEFA-Cup in 1997 or to the spectacular fall recoverer in 1977 by Klaus Fischer-also involved in the bribery affair (“My god, what we were stupid”)-which can now be followed as a goal of the wall in the Dortmund football museum. The Schalke, stylization of the dramatically lost championship in 2001 (“Master of Hearts”), of the suffering of thorn crown.

In conversation with young fans, I am often envied and very quickly when you find out that I experienced the last German championship in 1958 in a bodyy – albeit as a toddler – as a football fossil. Yes, the love of the S04 I sucked up with breast milk. Coal, scarce, malocher mentality. This matched the textile worker family from the Münsterland, which began to make itself comfortable in the long post -war economy. The mother knitted the four sons in a barren leisure time royal blue sweaters with snow -white emblem, and fitting coarse feasts. Luminous eye -catchers in times when merchandising was limited to the distribution of simple car stickers. Of the seven championship titles of the S04, six fell into the time of the Nazi dictatorship. Title collector under the swastika, knows Wikipedia. Under this sign, the Schalke roundabout danced in 1939 at the 9-0 triumph against SK Admira Vienna, which brought the players the NSDAP honorary membership. German championship? Why against Vienna? Questions of a bright child. Well, at that time Austria still belonged to Germany, it was a uncle and in this “still” smoked all the repressed Nazi skills. My love cooled down noticeably.

The Schalke swamp drove shimmering leading figures: a sun king, the cigar paffling Reviermacho, a racial large butcher. With the latter, a disassembly mentality prevailed on the royal blue stage, which demands a quick change victims. I gave my daughter’s sweater in Berlin, who received puffing officers at the Schalke guest game in the Olympic Stadium. From my love for royal blue, the question of Reinhard “Stan” Libuda remained, which matured in Mexico in 1970 in the 5-2 in the World Cup match against Bulgaria.

The real fan dies in anticipation when hope is turning into religion. And hopefully made a rest with a resting place on the club’s own burial ground. Arrived in the eternal royal blue and white Advent, he continues to dream of his eighth.