Formed: 1904
Nicknames: Die Königsblauen (The Royal Blues), Die Knappen (The
Miners)

UEFA club competition honours (runners-up in brackets)
• UEFA Cup: 1997
• UEFA Intertoto Cup: 2003, 2004

Domestic honours (most recent triumph in brackets)
• German title: 7 (1958)
• German Cup: 5 (2011)

History
• Founded in 1904 by a group of teenagers in the Gelsenkirchen district of Schalke as Westfalia Schalke, the club took on their current name in 1924, switching their colours from yellow and red to blue and white at the same time; they hit their peak with six league titles between 1934 and 1942.

• Captain Ernst Kuzorra and his brother-in-law Fritz Szepan masterminded the elegant, short-passing game known as the Schalker Kreisel (the Schalke Spinning Top), but the club's heyday came to an end after 1945 with only one further title in 1958, four years before the advent of the Bundesliga.

• Founder members of the Bundesliga in 1962, Schalke initially struggled at the wrong end of the table, and were relegated three times in the 1980s, before returning to the top tier in 1991; however, crowds at the Parkstadion, opened in 1973, remained consistently high.

• Their finest hour in Europe came in 1996/97 when Huub Stevens' team, dubbed the Eurofighters, reached the UEFA Cup final and beat FC Internazionale Milano on penalties after the second leg at San Siro ended with the aggregate scores level at 1-1; the construction of their Arena Aufschalke began the following year.

• Schalke's seven titles are behind only FC Bayern München (22) and 1. FC Nürnberg (9) in the all-time rankings, but all those successes were before the advent of the Bundesliga; they have finished second in the table six times, most recently in 2009/10.

Club records
Most league appearances: Klaus Fichtel (477)
Most league goals: Klaus Fischer (182)
Record victory: FC Bayern München 0-7 Schalke (Bundesliga, 9 October 1976)
Record defeat: VfL Borussia Mönchengladbach 11-0 Schalke (Bundesliga, 7 January 1967)

* Last updated 22 August 2012