Schalke's battling spirit

As the full-time whistle sounded in Gelsenkirchen on Saturday, the announcer screamed a breathless “Aus, Aus, Aus” ("It's over, it's over, it's over!") into the PA system.

His words stood for all the screams, groans and raw emotion of the Schalke faithful over the final few minutes of the game.

One fan, decked out in half a dozen different scarves from his travels as a Schalke supporter, was adamant before the game that losing Jens Keller was a bad move.

It seems that Schalke's fans want to believe, but the Royal Blues and Roberto di Matteo just remain an unconvincing match.

The Schalke story

Today, with the much-needed 3-2 win against Wolfsburg, those troubles will have surely been forgotten, for one night at least.

Schalke's footballing story couldn't be more different to the auto-powered dollars of Wolfsburg. Glance around the Veltins-Arena on a matchday and the references to coal-mining are unavoidable: the double-hammer symbol, the jumbo screen branding of the interior of a mine shaft, the newly-designed tunnel (see below) that resembles an old coal-mine.

Born out of the heavily-industrial city of Gelsenkirchen, FC Schalke 04 rose to prominence alongside the expansion of the mining industry in the 1920s. The club is never quick to forget the spirit of the city, it says. There’s even a pre-game club hymn that is accompanied by a small historical video of mines on the big screen.

It’s a smart effort from the club – and sign of collective identification, to give the fans from every race, religion and social background something to identify with.

Without a league championship since 1958 and almost annual crisis-patches, that’s probably the sole reason there are 60,000 packing out the atmospheric Veltins-Arena week after week.

Backs to the wall

On Saturday against Wolfsburg it looked like it was going to be an easy win for Schalke. After 25 minutes the hosts were three-nil up and cruising. Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting looked marginally offside for the first goal, then he sprinted from deep to add a second. Another minute or two later, the ball then ricocheted around Wolfsburg’s box and ended up past Diego Benaglio.

But nothing is ever easy at Schalke. In the end, thrown under pressure from the minute 74 goal from Wolfsburg's Nicklas Bendtner, Schalke clung on and survived. The cheers at the end were not ones of delight, they were of sheer relief. The win means Schalke have now clawed their way back up to sixth on the table.

Even if Schalke did let their opponents back into a game that should never have been a risk the defensive instruction of coach Di Matteo will surely have helped in the closing stages, barricading against Wolfsburg's high-earning attack.

Die Knappen – an old German word for ‘the Miners’ and Schalke's other nickname – were forced to dig deep to get the right result here. And it will surely be like that all season, no matter how big a name they have coaching them.