Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil"

Pablo Torre Finds Out delves deep into the tumultuous journey of Schalke 04, a historic German soccer club, and its controversial partnership with Gazprom. This episode masterfully intertwines sports, politics, and the metaphorical narrative of a Faustian bargain, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of how financial ambitions can lead to unforeseen consequences.

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1. Introduction to Schalke 04 and the Faustian Bargain

Pablo Torre sets the stage by framing Schalke 04's story as a modern-day Faustian tale. Drawing parallels between the legendary pact where Faust trades his soul for knowledge and power, Pablo introduces the central theme: Schalke's deal with the Russian gas giant Gazprom.

Pablo Torre [05:02]: "This is a story about the strings that get attached to offers of sports salvation, which means that this is a story about your favorite team as well."

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2. Schalke 04: A Historic Club with Deep Roots

Schalke 04, established in 1904, boasts a rich legacy with seven German championships, the last being in the late 1950s. Based in Gelsenkirchen, a town with a strong industrial heritage, the club is deeply intertwined with the community's identity.

Bradley Campbell [11:03]: "They formed in 1904. And God, they're known as one of the historic clubs in Germany."

Schalke's aesthetic is described as methodical and industrious, reflecting the structured efficiency often associated with German engineering.

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3. The Partnership with Gazprom: The Beginning of the Downfall

In 2007, Schalke 04 entered a sponsorship deal with Gazprom, a state-owned Russian natural gas supplier. At the time, Gazprom was a promising partner aiming to expand its influence through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.

Axel Haffer [17:42]: "When Gazprom was presented, they basically shot a commercial where you had Gazprom employees somewhere in Siberia that were drilling for gas. And that was very similar to, you know, the mining images that we all had in our mind."

This partnership initially brought financial stability and competitive success to Schalke, propelling them to second place in the Bundesliga and a quarterfinal appearance in the UEFA Champions League the following year.

Bradley Campbell [23:52]: "It was pure domination. The first year that they did the deal with Gazprom, Schalke went second place in the Bundesliga."

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4. Geopolitical Shifts and Rising Tensions

The geopolitical landscape shifted dramatically in 2014 with Russia's annexation of Crimea, leading to widespread international condemnation and economic sanctions. This development put Schalke's partnership with Gazprom under intense scrutiny.

Bradley Campbell [25:27]: "I am familiar with the West's view of Russia... Now calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

Despite growing tensions, Schalke's board debated the viability of continuing the partnership, weighing financial benefits against political and ethical considerations.

Axel Haffer [25:56]: "We were not getting that for free. So I guess the price for that was obviously political greenwashing... but also the risk that something would happen, something did."

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5. The Unraveling: Financial Missteps and Decline

Post-2014, Schalke's performance began to falter. The club struggled to maintain its competitive edge, culminating in relegation to the second division after finishing last in the league. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated financial strains by cutting off revenue from matchday tickets.

Bradley Campbell [30:32]: "They go winless in its first 14 matches."

As debts ballooned, Schalke found itself sinking deeper into financial turmoil, leading to the departure of Clemens Tonys, the so-called "Meat Baron" responsible for orchestrating the Gazprom deal.

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6. The Metaphorical Descent: Schalke 04's Struggle

The episode employs the metaphor of Faust's descent to illustrate Schalke's plight. Unlike Faust's immediate damnation, Schalke's decline is portrayed as a slow, agonizing downfall characterized by financial instability and deteriorating team performance.

Bradley Campbell [38:41]: "The devil just absolutely pummels him... Schalke proceeds to finish in 12th place the following season."

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7. Redemption and Rebuilding: The Role of Matthias Tillman

Amidst the chaos, Matthias Tillman emerges as a beacon of hope. A lifelong Schalke fan and former investment banker, Tillman takes the helm to steer the club out of its dire financial straits. His approach emphasizes local control and community involvement, distancing the club from its tainted Gazprom ties.

Cousin Max [41:44]: "Players will come and go, even CEOs will come and go. But we will stay."

Tillman's strategy involves restructuring debts, seeking new revenue streams, and reinvesting in the team's infrastructure and talent development, all while maintaining the club's authentic identity rooted in its working-class heritage.

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8. Current State and Future Prospects

As the episode concludes, Schalke 04 is on a precarious path. While they've managed to stave off immediate relegation, the long-term outlook remains uncertain. The balance between financial recovery and competitive resurgence is delicate, with the ever-present shadow of larger, wealthier clubs looming over their ambitions.

Bradley Campbell [50:53]: "We fixed ourselves and we're marching our way back up to daylight once more."

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9. Reflections and Broader Implications

"Pablo Torre Finds Out" not only recounts Schalke 04's story but also serves as a cautionary tale about the perils of compromising institutional integrity for financial gain. The episode underscores the intricate interplay between sports, politics, and community identity, inviting listeners to ponder the true cost of success.

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Notable Quotes

• Pablo Torre [07:25]: "I have a sense now of your cousin Max."
• Bradley Campbell [04:13]: "Blood empty. Yeah, they're standing on the field. Blood empty."
• Axel Haffer [35:03]: "We're not the richest club and will never be the richest club, and our fans are not the richest, but it's a very emotional club."
• Cousin Max [42:56]: "But we still carry 160 million debt. So the ratio has changed."

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Conclusion

This episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out masterfully navigates the complex narrative of Schalke 04, blending sports, economics, and geopolitics into a compelling story of ambition, downfall, and the enduring spirit of a community. Through incisive interviews and poignant storytelling, listeners gain profound insights into the human and institutional cost of Faustian bargains in the modern sports landscape.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings. The Crown is yours. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Bradley Campbell]

I've been looking for freedom I've been looking so long.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad, you're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.

[Bradley Campbell]

How's it going, man?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I'm all right, but you're, you're. You're finishing. Is this lunch?

[Bradley Campbell]

Granola bar, which technically I guess is lunch right now. Yeah, it's.

[Pablo Torre]

I've been tracking you across the office. I am always rushing around from thing to thing. You seem haggard, especially lately.

[Bradley Campbell]

It's been a stretch.

[Pablo Torre]

Dude, you are trying to be kind to yourself by eating a kind bar. Yeah, a real luxury.

[Bradley Campbell]

Oh, it's good, it's good. We'll do a question.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bradley Campbell]

Have you ever done something and this will. This, this will go somewhere. Have you ever done something to someone where you ask them to, you know, like a favor for you, they do it and only then afterwards do you realize that, oh, man, you just asked them to do like something absolutely wretched.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. First time I moved out of my parents apartment, asked a friend, can you help me move? Having never done it myself and moving in New York is basically like, would you like to.

[Bradley Campbell]

Would you like to be basically stuck in a set of stairs trying to maneuver a couch at like a truly 64 degree angle?

[Pablo Torre]

My good buddy Juan, I am so sorry. He got the bottom part of the couch and I was like, just steering it from the top, which is an unequal distribution of labor. So, yeah, I did that. Which I am still living down.

[Bradley Campbell]

I did this with my cousin Max, who lives in Germany, and we're talking on Zoom. And I looked on, you know, kind of Google Maps and I found out where he was at. And I'm like, oh, dude, he's next to Borisio. Dortmund, Holland. Holland's body is beautiful beyond compare. And at that time, they were incredible. They had Erin Holling, they had Christian Pulisic. Is there any chance, like, you could get me a hat?

[Pablo Torre]

You're that kind of cousin. You're like, oh, wait, you're in. You're in Germany. Can I get some merch?

[Bradley Campbell]

Can I get some merch? And he was just like, yeah, okay, so he gets one. And then I proudly, like, put the Borussio Dortmund hat on the next time we're on Zoom. And I'm like, max, check out my hat. And he was like, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

He responded the way that Juan responded when I asked him to help me move a couch.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah, that's. That's a good hat, Bradley. And I was like, what's up? And he was like, well, Borussio Dortmund, they're. They're our enemy. Like, we. We root for this team called Schalke, and we just hate Borussio Dortmund. And I'm just like, oh, oh, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

I wasn't familiar with the geopolitics of intra German professional soccer clubs.

[Bradley Campbell]

It's huge.

[Pablo Torre]

But apparently, Bradley, as I understand now where you're headed. Yeah, this is a thing.

[Bradley Campbell]

But then he told me, like, well, it's. It's okay. It's just. It's been a hard time to be a Schalke fan. And I was like, what do you mean? Oh, man, don't ask me. It's almost desperate to see what's going on at the moment, Especially no one, really. So, of course I asked him. He told me about this storied team of his. Schalke 04, one of the best in all of German football, just became dead inside. Well, fans described it as being blood empty. That's kind of a phrase we use here. Blood empty. Yeah, they're standing on the field. Blood empty. It's like standing on the field and leaving a hollow impression of yourself. Wow, that's a great. Yeah, that's a great. That's a great phrase.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Bradley Campbell]

Welcome to the German language. He went on to tell me all about Schalke Ofor's downfall. And as he was doing this, I realized that it was a very German story, a. A Faustian tale, if you will. One that involved a deal with the devil, the selling of a soul, and a story that dropped his, like, his favorite football club out of the top division and down into a geopolitical firestorm that our own president has said could lead us to World War Three.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. I have a sense now of your cousin Max.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yep.

[Pablo Torre]

God bless him, his favorite club. But in terms of the Faustian bargain here, this deal with the devil, who is the devil in this story?

[Bradley Campbell]

So at first, I had absolutely no idea. So I went to Germany to find out.

[Pablo Torre]

Something very big is supposed to happen as early as today, Thursday, May 15, 2025, what you're hearing there is Russian President Vladimir Putin proposing earlier this week to, quote unquote, restart peace talks directly with Ukraine, the nation he'd invaded. And ostensibly, this would end the war that has impacted both all of Europe certainly, as well as the United States. And what Putin says here is that these talks should start without delay. As early as May 15. And look, the whims of Vladimir Putin the whole way that his dictatorship in Russia can offer both destruction and salvation in one fell swoop might not immediately seem like an urgent sports story to you. But what you're about to hear today in the story of Schalke 04, this big German soccer team, is a story that's about a lot more than just Europe or international politics or our correspondent Bradley Campbell's cousin Max. This is a story about the strings that get attached to offers of sports salvation, which means that this is a story about your favorite team as well. So this is one of those stories that I greenlit not because I love German soccer. It's a story that I greenlit because there was this Faustian deal with the devil. And so when it comes to people who are not familiar with Faust and that deal, I mean, this is an omnipresent kind of story throughout human history.

[Bradley Campbell]

I mean, if you've seen the Little Mermaid, that's a Faustian tale. If you've watched Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, also Faustian tale.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. The Little Mermaid gets to be among.

[Bradley Campbell]

Gets to wagh.

[Pablo Torre]

Among us on land.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. Tenacious D gets to shred.

[Pablo Torre]

That's right. But the original. Right. Which goes back centuries.

[Bradley Campbell]

1700S. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

It's about an astrologer who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. And that story ends, I suppose, quite literally with Faust the astrologer in hell.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah. Which, judging from what we heard from Max and the blood empty soccer team, is kind of where Schalke was. I flew the overnight to Amsterdam because it's a much cheaper flight. And then, gosh, I took a couple different commuter rails and then got to a little West German town called Gelsenkirchen. It felt like being on Amtrak and then going through the Alleghenies and. And then all of a sudden, landing in Pittsburgh.

[Pablo Torre]

So as you look out the train window, it's Europe, but you're describing at this point, a very familiar part of America.

[Bradley Campbell]

Definitely. Definitely. It had this vibe of industry and kind of this vibe of an area that's seen better days. It was the center of the mining region in Germany, but all the mines have been capped, so there's no mines anymore. They switched from coal power to natural gas.

[Pablo Torre]

Amid these rolling hills is a ruin that also harkens back to this time when it was thriving.

[Bradley Campbell]

And it's full of fans with just a ton of hope and a ton of faith. Schalke fans are Notorious for illusionary optimism, basically. And you already heard that, the comments on the Internet, on the radio, they scored a goal at the weekend, which is at this point is kind of rare. Okay, we score a goal, we can win. If we win this game, we win the next game, we win the whole season. We get up and next year we're going to be German champion. This, this whole crazy loving fantasy of becoming the champion once again immediately kicks in. It's always like lottery or nothing. But then you start like walking through Gelsenkirchen, you're like, this is, this is a poor area. It's a lot of working class immigrants, a lot of them coming from Turkey, and then a ton of working class Catholics. So much that Pope John Paul ii.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, this is the original cool Pope.

[Bradley Campbell]

I know the cool Pope. He visited the area in 1987. And it is also, I learned, an honorary Schalke 04 member.

[Pablo Torre]

So somewhere, JP2 and cousin Max are kindred spirits.

[Bradley Campbell]

And then also my grandmother as well. Her family owned a barge, an actual barge that, that they went up and down the Rhine River. Everyone had to pitch in and work. You know, it's kind of all hands to keep everything, everything afloat. And if the ship lists, you know, you got to fix it yourself.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. So this is the home of Schalke 04?

[Bradley Campbell]

Yep.

[Pablo Torre]

For those like me who didn't know much about Schalke when they clicked on this episode, what is the word you would use to describe just their sort of aesthetic, their vibe. How old are we talking?

[Bradley Campbell]

They formed in 1904.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so that's the 04, that's the.

[Bradley Campbell]

04 in Schalke 04. And God, they're known as one of the historic clubs in Germany. Seven time German champions, although the last one was in 57, 58.

[Pablo Torre]

And the visuals here, what is this Visuals?

[Bradley Campbell]

It's up on a hill, it's right outside of town. So you've got grass field upon grass field. Everything just feels structured and efficient and German.

[Pablo Torre]

It feels like a factory.

[Bradley Campbell]

Completely, completely.

[Pablo Torre]

When you realize who they've produced, what this factory has put out into the world. So Mesut Ozil, Turkish, right? Son of Turkish immigrants. Yep. One of the greatest midfielders in the world.

[Bradley Campbell]

There's no flag this time. And Ozil with a chance to win it. It's Mesut Ozil. Most creative midfielders for sure.

[Pablo Torre]

And then the greatest goalkeeper, many would argue, ever, Manuel Neuer is from there.

[Bradley Campbell]

Dortmund trying to turn this chance into an early goal. And they might just do that. Marco Reus and foiled by the brilliant Manuel Neuer.

[Pablo Torre]

The larger picture here is just that. Here is this factory producing this raw material and then refining it along this assembly line, exporting it out to the wider football world.

[Bradley Campbell]

That truth is one of the coolest parts about Schalke 04 is that it's one of these rare professional teams that look like the town.

[Pablo Torre]

So this team, when you look at the business of it, yeah, they're on the Forbes top 10 list alongside Bayern Munich, alongside Barcelona, alongside Manchester United. These are the biggest brands in soccer.

[Bradley Campbell]

The other part that I liked is they're completely owned by fans, but at times it can put them in a bind.

[Pablo Torre]

So the perspective I want to bring here is from Green Bay. So Green Bay, the Packers.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

This is considered in America the most populist case study in how to do something like this fan owned. Lots and lots and lots of members. And I think it's Green Bay, hundreds of thousands. In this case, Schalke is dealing with how many members?

[Bradley Campbell]

190,000 members.

[Pablo Torre]

But the idea is that, like, there's no. There's no one billionaire owner. It's this mess of people.

[Bradley Campbell]

God knows that's my dream, to own.

[Pablo Torre]

A soccer club, but at least like.

[Bradley Campbell]

To have a say in some sort of team's direction, like where they're sailing, I think would be absolutely important, rather than having just like, you know, some billionaire owner's teenage sons, you know, deciding who to buy based on their Madden rating.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. Brooke Johnson, not a character in this specific story. And so as they are living your dream, as they are voting on decisions, deciding collectively how to try to proceed with this idyllic populist football vision. In an era, of course, of billionaires and petro states and oligarchs and the deepest pockets you've ever seen in the history of sports, it does raise another concern about. So where is the money coming from, Bradley?

[Bradley Campbell]

That's the big question. I mean, you need massive amounts of money to compete at the highest levels of football.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Winning is correlated directly across the board here with money.

[Bradley Campbell]

So here begins our Faustian tale. Enter the meat baron. A man named Clemens Tonys, who says, quote, I am not a godfather, which.

[Pablo Torre]

Is totally a thing a Godfather would say.

[Bradley Campbell]

100%. 100%. He's like, I don't like that term. There is no such thing as. As a godfather. Again, Godfather vibes.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so obviously we want to meet the Godfather.

[Bradley Campbell]

Meat baron was like, sorry, dude. So he never responded to any of our emails. But we did talk to a German reporter from Reuters named Tasilo Hummel.

[Tasilo Hummel]

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Who is.

[Bradley Campbell]

An expert in all things. Meet Baron.

[Tasilo Hummel]

It's a very, very fascinating character. You know, I mean, he's originally a butcher. He grew up in post war Germany. He often told the tale how poor everybody was back then and how much he's kind of rooted in the working class, which he truly is.

[Bradley Campbell]

He says that Tony's transformed from butcher to effectively running the Tyson Chicken of West Germany.

[Tasilo Hummel]

And he was a big, big, big Schalken we fear fan for his whole life. I mean, being a Schalke fan is something that you are born into. It's something that is so much part of that working class identity in that part of Germany.

[Bradley Campbell]

And he couldn't just dump his own money into it. There's rules preventing that.

[Pablo Torre]

That meat money wasn't good.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. So what he had to do is he had to catch one of these like giant big fish sponsors that they could put across like the crest right across the front of their Jersey. Think like crypto.com for the Lakers.

[Pablo Torre]

They need a sponsor. In other words, it's very American ideal.

[Bradley Campbell]

And so, so they got Gazprom.

[Pablo Torre]

Gazprom.

[Bradley Campbell]

A state owned Russian natural gas supplier, Huge industrial giant. But at that time no one ever.

[Tasilo Hummel]

Really heard of that company. I mean, their business was selling gas to kind of bulk clients to other German, like German utilities. They didn't really have consumers, so the brand was completely unknown. It popped up out of the blue and suddenly it was everywhere.

[Bradley Campbell]

They went to Schalke and they did this presentation. This is why Gazprom is great. So I actually found a guy in Germany who was in the room where it happened.

[Axel Haffer]

Yeah, I remember I was actually at the presentation of Gazprom with my daughter. So yeah, it was 2007, she was 4 years old. So first time that she was in the stadium.

[Bradley Campbell]

This is Axel Haffer, he's the current chairman of Schalke 04. And truthfully, Pablo, he actually saw a connection between this giant state run natural gas supplier and this tiny mining town in Germany.

[Axel Haffer]

When Gazprom was presented, they basically shot a commercial where you had Gazprom employees somewhere in Siberia that were drilling for gas. And that was very similar to, you know, the mining images that we all had in our mind. So it looked like a very good fit. It was actually a good fit at that time.

[Pablo Torre]

And so Gazprom, when they saw Schalke, what were they seeing in this club?

[Bradley Campbell]

So they were also using Schalke as marketing, they had this really big goal of creating a second pipeline connecting Russia to Germany. Even more of their natural gas, called Nord Stream 2, was the big project, as in the second Nord Stream pipeline. The Nord Stream Pipeline is one of the world's largest infrastructure projects along a.

[Axel Haffer]

Carefully chosen 1,224 kilometer route to transport 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Russia to the European Union.

[Bradley Campbell]

They thought that sponsoring a major historic German soccer club would be a great way to get that done.

[Axel Haffer]

Everybody was happy. Oh, this is a good deal. This is a very big company. It's very important. It's a good partner. Relationships with Russia have historically been very good between Germany and Russia. So in 2007, I would say absolutely fine.

[Pablo Torre]

So now I am getting a sense of the devil in this story.

[Bradley Campbell]

Well, actually, no, Pablo, I think it's important that we step back here for just a minute. And it's kind of wild to think now, but during this period of time, Russia and Putin were considered great business partners. And I learned this from that Reuters reporter, Tasilo Hummel.

[Tasilo Hummel]

The first thing is that, look, Putin wasn't the devil. He wasn't the devil for 10 years. He wasn't the devil for Schalke. He was a devil for nobody in Germany 15 years ago. That's just not how it was.

[Bradley Campbell]

And same thing in the US at the time, if you remember, there was President Barack Obama kind of mocked that guy. Yeah, mocked. Then, you know, mocked Senator Mitt Romney for holding, quote, antiquated views on Russia.

[Pablo Torre]

A few months ago, when you were asked, what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaeda.

[Axel Haffer]

You said Russia in the 1980s are.

[Pablo Torre]

Now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Because, you know, the Cold War has been over for 20 years, but Putin to the west, looking like an ally, like an economic engine. Yeah, I had admittedly, yeah. Forgotten about this entirely.

[Bradley Campbell]

I think it's important when we. When we hear Axel from Schalke and listen to him, you gotta even magnify it more, because Germany, they're absolutely familiar in dealing with communist leaders and businesses in a way that I would say few, if any, other Western democracies are. Because their country at one point was split east and West.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, that was the whole Wall thing.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah. I believe, culminating with arguably the greatest moment in world history.

[Pablo Torre]

So I like that you have power ranked all of the moments in world history. And the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bradley Campbell's number one slot.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. But more Specifically David Hasselhoff dancing and singing at top the Berlin Wall while it fell, wearing a black leather jacket, stonewashed denim.

[Pablo Torre]

I do not apologize for liking that a lot. So this has now become so much more German than I even anticipated when I greenlit a story about German soccer and German politics.

[Bradley Campbell]

You're welcome.

[Pablo Torre]

So Ashalke has accepted this deal with Gazprom. And so the question I suppose is how much did they know that there were these strings attached? How much Faust did they know was going to be in this bargain?

[Bradley Campbell]

I mean, that's the nature of a Faustian bargain is you don't really know in real time how bad it will get.

[Axel Haffer]

We are not only getting a very good deal and getting better money for what we are offering than with other partners. We were not getting that for free. So I guess the price for that was obviously political greenwashing, if you want to say so, but also the risk that something would happen, something did.

[Matthias Tillman]

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[Pablo Torre]

So I'm thinking about the original astrologer Faust who makes this deal with the devil for knowledge and power and gets it. And it is awesome. Awesome, right? For. For some amount of time. So what did that look like for Schalke? 04. The high of getting all of this power.

[Bradley Campbell]

It was pure domination. The first year that they did the deal with Gazprom, Schalke went second place in the Bundesliga. But more than that, the next year they reached the quarterfinals of the Champions League. German teams have ambushed Manchester United Champions League campaigns before, but Sir Alex Ferguson can hardly ask for more than a semi final against a mid table Bundesliga side.

[Pablo Torre]

And so this team that hadn't won in Germany since the 50s is now competing to the point where they make the Champions league semifinals. In 2011, they are playing Manchester United again, one of the top brands, one of the top clubs in the world.

[Bradley Campbell]

With the best players.

[Pablo Torre]

And things are going better than anybody could have thought.

[Bradley Campbell]

An Uchida with a cross.

[Axel Haffer]

Raul tried to reach it in the cup of Gerardo.

[Pablo Torre]

A goal for Schalke.

[Bradley Campbell]

And gas problem. Like they're living life at this point too. This is 2011. They ink a deal to get Nord Stream 2 up and running.

[Pablo Torre]

They get their pipeline, their sequel.

[Bradley Campbell]

Exactly. They get the sequel. But then comes 2014. Pablo and that is when the story truly follows the tale of Faust. More than 200,000 protesters gathered in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev today, furious over the government's refusal to sign a trade agreement with the European Union. Police use tear gas and clubs to beat back demonstrators who surrounded President Viktor Yanukovych's office. Ukrainians overthrow their president in the Maidan revolution. Russia responds by annexing Crimea by force.

[Pablo Torre]

Russian troops spreading out throughout the strategic Crimean peninsula. President Obama speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

[Bradley Campbell]

And during this hostile takeover of Crimea, a lot of Shalka fans are. They're pissed.

[Axel Haffer]

It started to be more and more controversial. I guess from an economical perspective, it was financially still a very attractive deal. But the discussion that we had at that time was, okay, is it worth the risk?

[Bradley Campbell]

There is a growing international chorus slamming Russia's actions.

[Pablo Torre]

The British Prime Minister saying there is no excuse.

[Bradley Campbell]

Canada withdrawing its ambassador from Moscow for the EU and the us it was clear that. Not really. They imposed sanctions on Russian and Ukrainian officials linked to the Crimean takeover. They said it was, quote, undermining the democratic process and institutions in Ukraine.

[Pablo Torre]

The Russian military must stand down. The aspirations of the Ukrainian people must be respected and political dialogue must be allowed to continue. And so this is where I am familiar with the West's view of Russia. Right. Like Obama made that joke. This isn't the 80s anymore.

[Bradley Campbell]

Turns out it is.

[Pablo Torre]

And now if you're Shalka, the pressure clearly would be to cut ties with Vladimir Putin's gas Giants, like, how can you possibly be the team with Gazprom across your chest in all these ways?

[Axel Haffer]

It's politics. Yeah. So you have different views there. I mean, we have 190,000 members. So you have everything from the far left to the far right. I mean, everything there. So in the board, some people were a bit more skeptical. Some said, okay, it's still a good partner. Yes, there are political problems, but we are a sports club and that's not our problem. For me personally, I mean, I never bought a Gaz Brom jersey, so. So because I just thought, okay, yeah, no, doesn't feel right.

[Pablo Torre]

This is him sticking to sports. Right. This is another refrain we are familiar with in America.

[Bradley Campbell]

And so the partnership with Gazprom continues. As tisilohanner from Reuters told me, maybe.

[Tasilo Hummel]

That should have been the moment where people should have changed their minds and kind of updated their. Do a software update in their strategic thinking, which and Schalke did not do. And you can say that maybe from that point in time, it became really a grave mistake and it went downwards ever since.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, the fact that the 2018, 2019 season happens as that is happening. Right, so I'm going back to the record that I'm consulting here. They make another run in the Champions League.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah, they make it to the round of 16, but that's when they run into a club who made an even bigger deal with an even more powerful entity.

[Pablo Torre]

Four places in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League are confirmed. Four more will be decided this week with Manchester City and Schalke set to complete their round of 16 tie with a second round. So Manchester City might be the prime example of what you need to take.

[Bradley Campbell]

Over this sport, the deal you need to make.

[Pablo Torre]

So they made a deal with a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. And so as a matter of scale. Yeah, like Schalke04's Faustian bargain, this is not rating in comparison to Man City.

[Bradley Campbell]

I feel like there's a lesson here, you know, like, no matter how rich.

[Pablo Torre]

You are, sterling in on the goalkeeper. Sterling in the corner. City get a winner. Incredible scene.

[Bradley Campbell]

So someone's always richer than you.

[Pablo Torre]

And I just gotta jump in here for a second to put an even finer point on this observation. Because as much as you might think that Vladimir Putin's favorite state owned energy company would have more than enough in its pockets, Manchester City is indeed owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family, which bought it in 2008. 2009. And this makes Manchester City the single richest club in the entire Premier League. They have spent billions on buying players this most recent transfer window. In fact, they just outspent everybody else. And none of this is especially close. And so in that possibleTotal round of 16 against Man City in 2019, Schalke loses 10, 2 on aggregate. At which point really spins out of control. Schalke proceeds to finish in 12th place the following season.

[Bradley Campbell]

Then the Meat Bear makes dumbass comments about Africans that anger the fan base. Rightfully so, I would add.

[Pablo Torre]

And then the whole pandemic happens. Meaning that Schalke's fans slash owners can't even get into their building anymore, which cuts off the team's revenues at the knees. And as for what is happening in front of those now empty seats, the team goes winless in its first 14 matches.

[Bradley Campbell]

They learned through five different managers and finished the season dead last in the league by a lot.

[Pablo Torre]

But the worst part about finishing dead last in the league in such a way was the fact that Schalke then got relegated down to the second division.

[Bradley Campbell]

And because it's covet, there's no market for players. So they just get deeper and deeper in debt. Then a Covid outbreak hits the meat barons factories, of course, PR nightmare. And the meat baron, after 19 years, finally steps down.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is all to say that the gazprom era of Schalke04, beyond being morally compromised by Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula also wasn't going great on the pitch. And so the meat baron, who I cannot help but think of at the end of that insane litany of events, government name, Clemens, Tonys, the Meat Baron. Did he get any sort of cosmic punishment for his role in this bargain? For leading Schalke down this particularly crazy path?

[Tasilo Hummel]

Nah, for Ternius personally, not so much for the club, but for Tonius personally, the whole thing still made huge, huge sense. He made money in Russia, so I'm not even sure if he feels like Faust himself.

[Bradley Campbell]

So he was fine, but the fans weren't. And when I was in Germany, I talked to some and they're just like, who are we and what happened to our soul? And I guess even worse was this knowledge that they were still falling, their club was still getting worse and going down and down and they hadn't hit rock bottom yet.

[Pablo Torre]

It does feel like there should be a German word for that feeling.

[Bradley Campbell]

Let empty.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Bradley Campbell]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Bradley Campbell]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Bradley Campbell]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Bradley Campbell]

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[Pablo Torre]

See DKNG Co audio. So this brings us now to February 2022, and in the sports calendar, this is a familiar point. The Winter Olympics in Sochi have just finished up. Vladimir Putin, Russian pride. Everyone's riding high. And then.

[Axel Haffer]

Right now there is a.

[Bradley Campbell]

Sound of bombardment coming, coming from all around us and all of the civilians from this area are fleeing.

[Axel Haffer]

I still remember that week. Absolutely crazy. So you basically had the troops starting to move and, you know, it was obvious that something could happen.

[Bradley Campbell]

So again, that's a. That's Axel, who I met up with in, in Germany, chairman of Shalco4. And he was really remembering this time where it wasn't this question of is Russia going to invade? It was this question of when are they going to invade Ukraine?

[Axel Haffer]

It was highly likely that something would happen. And so just the weekend before the invasion, we started to get enormous pressure. Okay, you need to terminate the contract, you need to take Gazprom off your jersey, etc.

[Bradley Campbell]

So some fans already had. They actually put duct tape across the Gazprom on the jersey so you couldn't see it covering up that logo. But the board that they elected continued to kind of wait.

[Axel Haffer]

We're not the richest club and will never be the richest club, and our fans are not the richest, but it's a very emotional club. And that's obviously what is once more important than anything else. So you need to keep the feeling of belonging and really helping each other. That is more important than a bit more money. As long as it doesn't kill you. That's the thing.

[Pablo Torre]

So that is a bind for Axel and Schalke to have to figure out.

[Bradley Campbell]

And it's like you're trying to protect this thing that you love. And it's like, you know, it's not just simply just cutting ties to make a statement.

[Axel Haffer]

Exactly. And that was exactly the challenge that we all had was, okay, are we willing to risk the existence of the club to do the right thing and how could we actually de risk that scenario?

[Bradley Campbell]

So they were working on Pablo 24 7, talking to Gazprom's representatives, who was actually, they were open to it because Nord Stream 2 that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. So getting out of contracts was the priority. But you know that that takes time, which is something they didn't have.

[Axel Haffer]

So during that week I basically did nothing else than just talking 247 with everybody because they obviously, everybody was very nervous. And this balance of what is exactly the right point in time where we can basically manage the financial risk and still do the right thing, we had to find it.

[Bradley Campbell]

The thing that they really needed was a new source of money.

[Axel Haffer]

We started discussions with the old mining association. So the company that used to operate all the mines is still active and has. Has a few assets. And we basically went to them and said, listen, if something happens, is there anything that we could do? And they said, yeah, for sure. We will help you. If you need to do it, we will support you. We will basically find some money and we will basically step in as an interim sponsor.

[Pablo Torre]

So just to recap this, what Axel is saying is that they go from Gazprom, Vladimir Putin's state owned gas giant.

[Bradley Campbell]

To a local union which doesn't have nearly the amount of money. Amazing that they have. But it is, it's that all hands concept again. You know, just the whole community rallying together to step up. But you know, while this is happening, I want to be like, oh, it's all warm and lovely, the Russian troops are still there.

[Axel Haffer]

And yeah, then we had on Thursday morning, 4am or I can't remember the exact time was basically before everybody got up, obviously the invasion started. Russian troops are closing in on the capital. Their military vehicles have been filmed entering the city. And in the last few hours multiple explosions have been reported.

[Bradley Campbell]

Exact figures are unknown, but there are.

[Axel Haffer]

Reports of large numbers of Ukrainian casualties, both military and civilian, since the invasion began, and of Russian military deaths. Streams of people, including.

[Pablo Torre]

And so at this point in the story of Faust, what happens is that he is condemned and judged for the deal he has struck in the middle of the night. To put the most literary sort of emphasis on this, a pack of devils carry his soul to hell. Bradley. So is that what happens to Schalke 04 here?

[Bradley Campbell]

Kinda, yeah. But it's a lot slower of a death, which is in some ways a little bit crueler. You know, without a massive sponsor in the club in disarray, they drop again back to the second division and they risk an even further drop to. To the third division.

[Pablo Torre]

And that's. That's the devil. The devil's carrying them to the netherworld.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're struggling each week just to survive. And for fans, it's just pure psychological torture. They're watching this team just absolutely stink on the field. I cannot help but think it's so bad, Cousin Mac. Worse than that, Pablo, is that there's a rule that if you're in the third division, you have to be financially stable. Schalke wasn't stable. So if the worst comes to worst, we're actually going to be forced to drop down to the amateur level. And so I'm not even being hyperbolic when I say, like, each week was.

[Pablo Torre]

Facing annihilation when it comes to identifying the devil, which is the reason you went searching in Gelsenkirchen in Germany in the first place. The devil isn't exactly Russia in our story. Right. The devil seems to be the pursuit of money, loss of control. And the loss of control they needed.

[Bradley Campbell]

To center themselves in a way and just kind of overcome these massive mistakes. And again, they had so much debt, so they had to be smart about it. And, you know, they put out a call, I guess, or, you know, cast nets to try and find which Schalke 04 member anywhere in the world could help him out.

[Pablo Torre]

And who do they end up finding?

[Bradley Campbell]

Let's go. Let's go. How's it going?

[Cousin Max]

Good.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah?

[Cousin Max]

Yeah.

[Bradley Campbell]

Game day.

[Cousin Max]

Game day. Yeah.

[Bradley Campbell]

Matthias Tillman. And he's been a fan of Schalke since he was five years old and bought his first jersey, which is a right of any, you know, upstanding schalke member nearly three decades ago.

[Cousin Max]

It was in 1994. And since then I bought one or two jerseys every year, always with a favorite player. So I collect jerseys, so I have a lot.

[Bradley Campbell]

So he moved back to Germany and started Doing the Lord's work, man. Like, I don't know if you've seen a recent photo of Daryl Morey, but.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, I've seen Daryl recently and dude is aging. Speaking of US presidents, he's aging like one.

[Bradley Campbell]

I mean, running a losing franchise is just absolutely brutal.

[Cousin Max]

So I wake up every day at 6am so that's the same every single day. But I have four kids, so yeah, you have to get up and bring them to school, to kindergarten. And then I drive here, so it's like 30, 35 minute drive for me. And then normally I arrive here, I have one other colleague in the management board and we discuss the most important things of the day. And yeah, then obviously as a CEO you have a lot to manage.

[Bradley Campbell]

It is truly a massive amount of work. That's what it takes.

[Cousin Max]

That's what it takes, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is a Faustian bargain of a.

[Bradley Campbell]

Different kind, but it's a different sort of pact.

[Cousin Max]

A lot of people in this region, they spend every penny they have on this club and spend all their time for this club. And yeah, that's why this club is more than just football.

[Bradley Campbell]

So the love is genuine. But let's get real. Dude was a former investment banker for Deutsche Bank. He was hired to kick ass and that's exactly what he's doing. He realized that, yeah, the club's got a lot of heart, but it's time for it to get a little professional too.

[Pablo Torre]

But how do you do that when you're loaded down with all of this insane debt from the Gazprom Meat Baron?

[Cousin Max]

Five years ago we had debt around 200 million. 220. But we had the value of our squad was also 200 million. Today it's around. The value of the squad is around 20 million. But we still carry 160 million debt. So the ratio has changed. And we are coming from a time where we had over 300 million in revenue to where we have just over 100.

[Pablo Torre]

What a nightmare. 200 million to 20.

[Bradley Campbell]

It's real. It's real.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean that's an insane fall.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. And I guess his big goal is just to get the debt down to $50 million, which he says is a manageable size. And look, he's upfront with the fans. He's like, our football club, it's going to suck for a year or two. But with patience there will be a pathway back up to the top.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, you're describing, you know, trust the process, which I of course personally have some, some fondness for. But you're talking about a rebuild. This is an old fashioned rebuild.

[Bradley Campbell]

100% it's a rebuild. But again, a rebuild with 190,000 fans voicing in on how to rebuild it. And so, oh my God, Matthias gets absolutely pummeled in the newspapers for this process. So what his answer was is they're going to have another separate cooperative that will run Velton's arena, which is like the Madison Square Garden. So people will be able to buy a stake in the co op separate from Schalke 04. And also businesses will be allowed to buy shares in this too. That is the solution. And it's going to be run completely independently of the other club as a way to generate money.

[Pablo Torre]

And with that money, with this new revenue stream, what do they want to do? Like, are they buying soccer players? Are they improving their facilities? What's. That's their goal.

[Bradley Campbell]

It's all of that. I mean, the goal is to get back up to the top division. And so whatever that takes. But I think the bigger goal than that, it's local control, which is also.

[Pablo Torre]

A philosophy I now understand that is adored true to this region for sure.

[Cousin Max]

What I think is important that you don't lose your DNA. And I think that is in Schalke, it's very important. Like what I said in the beginning, like, everybody knows where we're coming from. Our roots are here in that region, from the coal mining. And I think for us it's very important to be the club of the region, for the people in the region. And the values have not changed. They're still the same hard working people. And you have to honor that.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah, look, man, they're not going to ever replicate the size or money or deep pockets of a state of a natural gas company. But I guess you asked me earlier, when are the Angels going to come? Who are these Angels? And simple answer is the Angels are themselves. It's like Schalke's gonna pick Shalka back up.

[Cousin Max]

Investors come and go. They want to make money. They have whatever their interest is. But people here will stay. There's a saying here that players will come and go, even CEOs will come and go. But we will stay. It's us. And that's why we have to determine the future and not other people. And once you're on that ship, you feel the energy. That's why I think when you are there in the stadium, it's a different atmosphere because people know that's our ship and we can determine the direction. And that I think makes a big difference.

[Pablo Torre]

And so now I kind of feel like I'm on your grandma's barge or also perhaps a Bernie Sanders event. My skepticism here is simple though. Like, how do you win in this era of soccer, how do you win against the Petro States and oligarchs and sovereign wealth funds and the deepest pockets in the history of sports?

[Bradley Campbell]

I really want to say you just do it with your own gumption, but I don't know, man. After the meeting with Matthias, I walked over to Velton's arena for a match against FC Kaiser Sloughten, who happened to be nicknamed the Red Devils.

[Pablo Torre]

Just gets too perfect on the nose. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bradley Campbell]

So I got in there and, God, it was like an absolute rock concert. Fortunately, we couldn't film there. So you just gotta imagine this. You're walking into a giant arena and it's sold out. There's 62,075 fans, and they are screaming their heads off before the game even starts. I'm thinking they're gonna a crush.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, how does it go? How does the crushing go?

[Bradley Campbell]

The devil just absolutely pummels him. Falk can maybe salvage some pride.

[Pablo Torre]

Right now it's Kaizen coming forward and.

[Bradley Campbell]

Scything them apart as Daisuke Yokata makes it three. They get beat three to nothing. But someone else was in there with me, and I had no idea. And that was Cousin Max. He was in the stadium. He got like a last second ticket, bought it, and so he was there watching. I had no idea.

[Pablo Torre]

But that feels cosmic too, though.

[Bradley Campbell]

I know, I know. It really does. It really does. And the reason why it does is because I was just thinking about a lot of things, but one of them was like, good God, how much of a D I was.

[Pablo Torre]

That's really what this episode is about, is you being a terrible relative?

[Bradley Campbell]

Absolutely. I'm like, here's this absolutely beautiful thing that was at the risk of just like not continuing. And here I am asking, hey, dude, can I get you a Borussia Dortmund?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Knowing nothing about anything.

[Bradley Campbell]

Oh, my God, nothing about anything. And it's just absolutely stunning. And I didn't even tell you, like, beforehand, they actually. They had a miner's choir sing a sonnet beforehand just to, like, warm everything up. There's so much to love about this community. And yeah, it was just beautiful.

[Pablo Torre]

So what do you decide to do with these feelings now that are sloshing inside of you?

[Bradley Campbell]

I decided to board the ship, Pablo. I'm abandoning my journalistic integrity.

[Pablo Torre]

And so near the end here, Bradley, this video that you're Playing is. Is what?

[Bradley Campbell]

It's me signing my name to a document that made me an official member of Schalke 04.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. So this is you becoming one of the 190,000 members.

[Bradley Campbell]

190,001. I'm also in the process of buying a share of the co op.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. Which is just the most. Brooklyn.

[Bradley Campbell]

This whole time you've been talking to the co owner of a German professional soccer team, and I would add a budding real estate magnate of Gelsenkirchen.

[Pablo Torre]

And so if you are now wondering how Bradley Campbell's new soccer club is doing as its season draws to a close, I do have a bit of news here. Schalke 04, which had been playing in the second division of German soccer this season, has spent all year trying to climb out of this hole left by Gazprom. And yes, their own generally horrible decision making. The prospect of being sent down to the third division was looming. But we here at Pablo Torre finds out, are happy to now tell you that while Schalke04 is yet again coming down to the final match this weekend. Meaning that, yes, Putin's alleged peace talks and Schalke's future are once again intersecting. It does appear that they have fended off relegation this season and things did not look good for a while here.

[Bradley Campbell]

To be clear, we fixed ourselves and you know, we're marching our way back up to daylight once more.

[Pablo Torre]

I just got two questions before we get so truly, like highfalutin celestial about this. Where's the hat?

[Bradley Campbell]

The hat?

[Pablo Torre]

The Borussia Dortmund hat that is responsible for why we are here doing this story.

[Bradley Campbell]

Oh, I made amends. Here it is.

[Pablo Torre]

So, okay, so the black and yellow familiar Borussia Dortmund logo has been. Has been vandalized. What an expert way it has been painted over here. But describe what.

[Bradley Campbell]

Oh, we. We put. We crossed out the 09 and we put an SO4 across the BVD.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Bradley Campbell]

In bright royal blue letters.

[Pablo Torre]

Incredible. Rebranding. On that question of rebranding. My. My second question, my final question on the show today.

[Bradley Campbell]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Is did Schalke04 ever get a new sponsor? Like what replaced Gazprom across the jersey? What's the what. What are you doing?

[Bradley Campbell]

Oh, here.

[Pablo Torre]

Sorry. Okay, so this is.

[Bradley Campbell]

That's my jersey.

[Pablo Torre]

A beautiful, beautiful blue and white sun mini meal. Sun mini meal. What is sun mini meal across the chest of your jersey?

[Bradley Campbell]

It's a Swiss granola bar.

[Pablo Torre]

God damn it. This has been Pablo Torre finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.