Before Schalke nearly became the worst team in the history of German football, they were literally the third-biggest club in the country behind Bayern Munich and arch rivals Borussia Dortmund.
In fact, just two years before the bottom started to fall out, Schalke finished the season second behind Bayern. Heck, that very 2019/20 season during which they collapsed in the second half of the campaign, the Royal Blues were second at the end of the Hinrunde.
Schalke are a proud club, and their “Knappenschmiede” academy has literally produced some of the greatest players in the history of German football. So let’s honor Schalke and some of its legends of the recent past by looking at the 10 best players the Royal Blues ever developed from the ground up.
GK Manuel Neuer
We have to begin with Manuel Neuer, because the man is quite literally the best goalkeeper of all time, and if you are disputing this statement, then a lot of people are going to give you a side-eye (and then probably send you a clip of this power-save against Cristiano Ronaldo).
Before he joined Bayern Munich and sealed his status as the man who would change the way goalkeepers played, Neuer was already one of the best goalkeepers in European football at Schalke.
He reached the Champions League semifinals in 2010/11 under Ralf Rangnick (yeah, show that to the weirdos who think Rangnick is just some buffoon) with Schalke, which is a feat they may never match again.
During his time in Gelsenkirchen (fun fact: Schalke is the name of a quarter of this city), Neuer saved 78.6 percent of the shots he faced, which is actually a few percentage points higher than his career average at Bayern.
Neuer allowed just under a goal per game with the Royal Blues, too, which is pretty crazy when you consider his average was dragged down by his last season there when he averaged 1.29 goals per 90 because Schalke came in 14th.
AM Mesut Ozil
If Manuel Neuer is the best player Schalke ever produced, then Mesut Ozil has to be considered the most talented. He was so good that when Real Madrid sold him to Arsenal, Cristiano Ronaldo said he was upset and that losing his assist king would be “very bad news” for him.
In all honesty, it didn’t end up mattering because Cristiano ended up achieving his greatest team successes with the new-look midfield, but it is true that his best goal-scoring seasons were with Ozil.
The Gelsenkirchen native only actually recorded three assists for the Schalke senior team, because he ended up leaving for Werder Bremen at the age of 18 in the middle of the season, going on to record double-digit assists in his first full campaign with the club.
After that, Ozil established himself as the best playmaker in the Bundesliga with 9 goals and 14 assists, but even that was short-lived as Real Madrid promptly scooped him up and turned him into a machine who had 47 assists in three seasons.
It’s crazy to think Schalke sold him to Werder for just five million euros, but, in all honesty, it’s crazier to think Real Madrid spent only 18 million on him, too, when everyone knew he was going to be world-class. (And then they sold him to Arsenal for almost 50 million, where he had two great seasons then fell off a cliff…yeah Real Madrid are the kings of the transfer market.)
RW Leroy Sane
Leroy Sane is still going strong at the age of 28, and even though he’s the subject of transfer rumors with his contract expiring in 2025, Sane is better than a lot of people give him credit for. Before the wheels fell off for Bayern under Thomas Tuchel, he was honestly a Ballon d’Or candidate alongside Harry Kane.
One of the most talented German prospects of the last 10 years, Sane got his start at Schalke, and they did a really nice job of slowly developing him and integrating him into the first team, to the point where he became a big-game player in European competition.
By the time Pep Guardiola plucked him for Manchester City, Sane was one of the most underrated players in Europe with 8 goals and 6 assists in the Bundesliga, averaging 2.0 key passes and 2.9 dribbles completed per game in his final Europa League campaign.
On a much better team in Manchester City, Sane was even better, hugging the touchline and creating wonderful chances for his teammates after attacking fullbacks one-on-one and delivering pinballing low crosses into the corridor of uncertainty.
Sane had two seasons with both double-digit goals and assists, including 15 in the 2017/18 campaign when he wasn’t forced to make some appearances off the bench to accommodate Man City’s stacked group of wingers.
Although Sane has not been bad for Bayern and did win the treble under Hansi Flick in 2019/20, you wonder where he’d be statistically and in terms of his footballing development if he stayed with Pep instead of returning to Germany to play for their biggest club.
AM Julian Draxler
It might sound outrageous to people who weren’t watching the Bundesliga at the time, but Julian Draxler might rival Florian Wirtz and Mario Gotze as the greatest German prospect of all time.
He was scoring and assisting bangers with Raul and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar next to him for Schalke, earning starts at the age of 16 in a side that reached the Champions League semifinals.
Listen, I could use a whole bunch of quotes and statistics to try and sell you on just how brilliant teenage Julian Draxler was, but the only thing you need to see is this assist to Raul, which is quite literally the greatest assist you have never seen in your life. (And shoutout if you recognize the Shindy song in the background or have even heard of Shindy.)
Like, how? How does a teenager have the audacity and ingenuity to produce that assist for, of all people, freaking Raul? I mean, if it doesn’t come off, you have to talk to Raul about it.
But the best part is, the skill wasn’t some stupidly unnecessary Roberto Firmino no-look nonsense that gets five people with Jurgen Klopp profile pics drooling on Twitter. No, Draxler HAD to do that to even make the play possible. He didn’t do it for the flair or fame, because, well, less than .02 percent of the world’s population remembers that goal.
Why did such a phenomenal talent who had 10 goals as an attacking midfielder at the age of 18 flop? Simple. He made two terrible transfers that ruined his career, joining mismanaged corporate clubs that either stifled his development under incompetent coaching (Wolfsburg) or were unserious projects that relegated him to an overpaid bench player with far more talent than opportunity (PSG).
Actually, Draxler wasn’t even that bad for PSG. He had seven assists in one season despite not starting much, and for his career there, he did average a goal contribution every other game. I mean, they are currently employing significantly worse players…
Draxler is a sad case, but, hey, Schalke did everything right with him. They developed their most talented academy player ever into a star, but he made the mistake of moving to the wrong club at the wrong time and then arguably an even worse one in PSG.
GK Jens Lehmann
Manuel Neuer is the undisputed GOAT of Schalke – and every other team’s – goalkeepers, but Jens Lehmann was also a world-class keeper created in the cauldrons of Gelsenkirchen.
Lehmann is one of the most eccentric players of all time and quite possibly one of the dumbest, since a lot of his antics were more harmful than, say, Oliver Kahn throwing a tantrum at some poor striker.
But Lehmann was a great goalkeeper. He was one of the stars of the Arsenal Invincibles in the early 2000s’. He cleared an 80 percent save clip with two different teams, Arsenal and Dortmund, and won three league titles in three different leagues (AC Milan was the other side).
Yeah, Lehmann played for Milan for about five games in between jumping ship from Schalke to Dortmund, and he’s the most high-profile player to move between those clubs – even though he technically had a spacer period in between.
Why did Lehmann get booted out of Milan so quickly? A pair of silly mistakes that led to goals for the opposition, including handling a backpass and giving away a penalty, and an early substitution. Lehmann got benched and he pretty much just quit.
Before joining Milan, Lehmann spent over a decade with Schalke, winning the UEFA Cup and the 2. Bundesliga. If you want to consider overall impact, Lehmann is probably Schalke’s greatest ever goalkeeper over Neuer.
ST Mike Hanke
True Bundesliga fans know Mike Hanke very well. The striker spent a handful of seasons with Schalke to begin his career after being forged in their academy, going on to play for other notable Bundesliga sides like Wolfsburg, Hannover, and Borussia Monchengladbach.
Hanke won the DFB Pokal and the Intertoto Cup twice with Schalke in the early 2000s, and he was also a part of the Germany squad that finish third in the 2006 World Cup as host nation.
Although he wasn’t a prolific goal-scorer, Hanke was a solid striker who lasted as long as he did in the Bundesliga because he did his job, won battles in the air, and could work well with another striker.
CB Benedikt Howedes
The makeshift starting left back for the German national team, Benedikt Howedes was a classic center back through and through whose crosses that tournament were a reminder that Germany technically didn’t have a full XI.
It didn’t matter, because Howedes knew his limitations and also knew that he was in a long line of severely underrated center backs to have come from the club, including a player who did not make this list in Kyriakos Papadopoulos.
Howedes played for Schalke from 2007 to 2018, spending that final season on loan at Juventus before peacing out to Moscow. In that time, he won a World Cup, a DFB Pokal, and technically the domestic double with the Bianconeri.
GK Ralf Fahrmann
The last great goalkeeper for Schalke (no, Alexander Nubel doesn’t count), Ralf Fahrmann was briefly one of the best keepers in Bundesliga. He saved over 77 percent of the shots he faced from 2013 to 2015, and it looked like, heading into his late 20’s, Fahrmann was going to become one of the best in the world.
However, Fahrmann never kept that up, and instead of improving further, he slowly started regressing, to the point where Schalke were sending him to Norwich on loan.
The Royal Blues watched as they declined and Fahrmann sunk with them, becoming one of the worst keepers in Germany. Although he had one brilliant season with a save percentage back over 78 when Schalke briefly returned to the Bundesliga after two seasons under 70 percent, Fahrmann saved just 52.6 percent of the shots he faced in the 2. Bundesliga in 2023/24.
Fahrmann, at 34, seems to be, as the kids say, “finished”, but he was a very good goalkeeper for about a five-year period in the early 2010s, including a strong season with Eintracht Frankfurt before returning to the club that made him.
CB Joel Matip
How on earth Jurgen Klopp signed Joel Matip for free is one of football’s great mysteries, because the Cameroonian international, overshadowed as he was by Virgil van Dijk, was one of the best Premier League defenders of the era and a fixture in a side that won a Champions League title and reached two other finals.
Intelligent, composed on the ball, and not one to make errors, Matip was made in the Bundesliga and spent about seven years as a first-team player at Schalke before making the move to Merseyside.
Matip started nearly 200 Bundesliga games for the Royal Blues, even scoring 17 goals as a center back. He won the DFB Pokal with Schalke before becoming a serial winner at Liverpool and establishing himself as a true world-class center back.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.