Miron Muslic did not even have to wait for his first game in front of 62,000 supporters to appreciate the scale of what he had taken on as Schalke’s new head coach. That became clear when 3,000 fans turned up to watch the first training session this summer.”That makes this club not only big, it makes it special,” he tells Sky Sports on a visit to the club’s magnificent stadium. “Schalke is still a giant.” He went easy on the players in that first session but the ride was just beginning. “Fasten your seatbelts,” he told them.
Plymouth Argyle were frustrated when Muslic left them in the summer. He had arrived last January with the club bottom of the Championship. They ranked among the top half for points during his time in charge but it was not quite enough. “We ran out of games.”
He was preparing for a season in League One when Schalke came calling. It was, he admits, an emotional decision. Schalke are in the second tier but they are the world’s sixth biggest club in terms of membership with the third highest attendances in Germany.
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“Every single home game with 62,000 people here,” he says, looking out onto the pitch. “I thought of it as the most beautiful challenge in professional football. I saw the potential.” But the rational part of his brain realised that he is not the first incoming coach to think this.
“Leave your emotions aside for one and a half seconds, look closely, and then you can see how big this challenge is. Then, you just see a graveyard for coaches, burning through them like nothing.” Schalke have changed their coach during each of the last five seasons.
“I realised that this club…
2026-01-21 10:00:00
