FC Schalke 04
Supportersclub e.V.

In the Beginning...

...there were six (more or less) young men who met in a secret living-room during the Summer of ´96. Despite hailing from quite different backgrounds, i.e. you would find the more scarfer type just as you would find your odd casual element, we all came across to the point that being a paying member of Schalke 04 doesn´t really do a lot for you e.g. concerning tickets for "hot" away games etc. and that there was actually no one dealing with the interests of the club members and what is more no one really defined the members´ interests yet either.

We felt this gap had to be filled and decided to set up our own institution in order to represent the club members and at the time also the season ticket holders (a point we´ve dumped right now as we mainly intend to concentrate on the members)

Pretty soon we could convince more and more people of our cause and as a result we appearedin public for the first time with some flyers at the opening of the new season. The flyer mentioned our aims to be that members were to be preferred when ordering tickets for away-games, we intended to offer cheap travel to these matches and were genuinely interested in creating a better atmosphere at Schalke matches by using optical elements as seen at Italian or French matches by the so-called Ultra-groups who create spectacular choreographies on the terraces and stands.

These points are still basically very much what our club is about right now.

The only criteria for being a member of the Supporters Club is being a signed-up Schalke member at the same time.

What we are NOT about

We are not an organised Fan-Club whatsoever which means our members may prefer to attend the matches on their own, with their mates, by train, car, horse-wagon or whatever. You´re not obliged in any way to travel with our coaches nor participate in our organised tours.

We also don´t see ourselves as being the only "true supporters" or "real Schalker" around which seems to be the impression some people (like ?) to have of us. These kind of discussions are pretty much nonsense from our point of view.

What we do believe though, is that there are differences between faithful members and supporters of the club and the huge amounts of glory-hunters that have attached themselves lately and seem to feel that following Schalke is quite a trendy thing to do at the moment. If that is being arrogant to you - please yourself.

We are also NOT people that are moaning all the time or are basically opposing anything the club does. But then again if you like to see asking critical questions concerning the criteria for ticket-supply, ridiculous pricing for UEFA-Cup trips abroad, the future of our club
(e.g. turning into a joint-stock company rather than remaining a football club, our new stadium) as spreading negative vibrations and being moany - please yourself.

We are in no way an organisation that is interested in your social background or politcal beliefs nor do we ask for your age or the size of your shoes - we´re proud of the fact that we recruit a wide range of Schalke supporters that would normally not have much more in common than their passion for the boys in blue.

Our achievements

As usual, new ideas and concepts tend to be rejected and regarded in a rather sceptical manner by already established organisations and the club. To be honest we were probably a right pain in the backside for them - however it does make you think that shortly after our first meeting with club officials our match-day programme (Schalker Kreisel) praises the new club service for members and season- ticket holders who are now to be preferred when ordering tickets. Slight sparks of inspiration can also be concluded from the sudden offer of rather cheap coach trips when purchasing a so-called fancard...

The trips we´ve organised so far - coach trips to national away games, comparably cheap travel to our European Cup Matches in Trabzon/Turkey ( Istanbul-stay included), Valencia/Spain, Braga/Portugal, Milan, Prague and a special train to Stuttgart without any policing can also be seen as rather successful events especially keeping in mind we´re not a professional travel agency or fully occupied fans by any means.

We´d also like to point out that we do not receive any financial support from the club or potential sponsors.

Thus we can remain relatively independent , although we have to rely on the club for purchasing the away tickets. We´ve got our own ticket officer who tries to get hold of these tickets for us which , despite a few incidents in the past, usually works out pretty successful.

Finances

The Supporters Club is financed merely by its membership fees and the organisation of trips to away games on national and international level.

The round table/ Communication

As we don´t consider ourselves being the centre of fandom we initiated a round table some time ago in order to bring together the relevant fan - organisations "Dachverband", "Fan-Projekt", "Fan Initiative" and of course the club itself ordinary interested fans and to sort out some of the prejudice and problems and co-ordinate future actions/events together.

We believe that there´s been a lot of mistakes made on this field and this only leads to a bad atmosphere amongst each other - and surely no one benefits from that.

Time will tell how successful this round table can be but it shouldn´t be our fault if it fails.

In terms of working together, the annual punkrock-gig launched by the "Fan-Initiative´s" zine "Schalke Unser" and ourselves proves to be very positive indeed. Despite slight controversies we all stuck together and made a great night out of it.

Visions

Support in German grounds tends to be very boring and the same clubs sing all the same songs only varying the teams names or they don´t even use lyrics at all which leads to numerous "Lalalala"-songs. We´ve proved that this doesn´t have to be taken for granted as for matches in Leverkusen and Wolfsburg for instance showed the Schalke crowd can come up with an ace support consisting of own traditional club songs with hardly any interruption. We´d like to see this happen more often and hereby appeal to interested supporters to meet down near the fenceat away games to take the ground by storm and basically do the "sing your hearts out for the lads"-business wherever this is possible. Of course some of the German grounds don´t offer the best facilities for doing so but our club has most definitely deserved a better support.

The same can be said for the choreographies in order to create a better and more creative atmosphere at our games. We realise that other clubs are miles ahead here but our first steps on this field against Hansa Rostock in 97/98 and Nuremburg 98/99 and the result in positive reactions showed the great potential that lies within our ranks. It should be mentioned that these rather expensive actions were entirely paid for by the Supporters Club and we did not receive any financial support.

We hope to be consulted for future plans of the club and/or sponsors concerning material for improving the atmosphere as there´s been a few mistakes made there - we feel that investing thousands of Deutschmarks in drums and huge flags has hardly helped to improve the atmosphere at all.

We´ll have to wait and see how far these and other visions may turn into reality but we are quite convinced that with improving co-operation and public relations this can be done.

Member-conciseness

No one is really sure in which way the Bundesliga and our club will develop in future. For this reason we intend to improve the current transport of information and ask the club to give a better insight into the vital topics : "Schalke turning into a joint-stock company - where do we members come in ?" and "The new ground" (Schalke are building a new state of the art multi-purpose stadium right next to the current "Parkstadion")

We don´t feel that there has been satisfying information on this in the past.

The importance of these matters can be seen in the U.K. which pretty soon turned into the home of commercialisation rather than remaining the home of football. And in the past there´s a definite tendency of English developments and trends coming over to the continent about five years later - especially in football. When the cheapest season ticket will be at a totally ridiculous 300 quid as seen in Newcastle, it will be far too late!

Beyond the big business

Being rather critical of the current development at football a few members have started to follow the Schalke amateur team and have achieved free or cheaper admission for season ticket holders and members. The amateur team are playing in the legendary "Glück Auf Kampfbahn" which is Schalke´s old ground and witnessed some of the greatest football in our club´s history. Even at away games a little bunch of loayl supporters have established themselves and a few matches have been visited by coach.

We hereby wish to encourage more and more fans to benefit from this and back our second team in larger numbers!

"Hi-Ha-Höre , Schalke Amateure" (one of the amateur-chants which means as much as "hi-ha-höre, schalke amateure")

Finally

We hope to have given a slight impression of what we are about and maybe we could even get rid of a few resentments and prejudice towards ourselves. If you are interested in joining the Supporters Club don´t hesitate to contact us - but keep in mind Schalke membership is obligatory. Otherwise you are always welcome to come up to us at the games of our Bundesliga and amateur teams or turn up for a pint at our meeting-point in Gelsenkirchen, Cafe Central,Weberstr.18 , app. 2 minutes walking-distance from the main station.


GLÜCKAUF!

Oli4, Arndtie & the supps


contact:

Oli4 - 0173-83 62 109 - email: sprachrohr@sfcv.de

Arndtie - 0172-28 49 192 - email: abseits-ge@t-online.de