FC Schalke: 10 best players in post-war club history

2. Klaus Fichtel

When you start a club at the age of 20 in 1965 and end at the same club at the age of 43 in 1988, you definitely did something right with that club. Even if there was a brief four-year period where you played at Werder Bremen. That man is Klaus Fichtel, the all-time most-capped player in FC Schalke history with 477 caps.

While playing fullback isn’t always the quickest way to becoming one of your club’s greatest players of all time, Fichtel, affectionately known as ‘The Fir’ did it, and he did it as well as it can be done. Though it only amounted to 14 goals, it amounted to much more on the ‘you can’t track that with stats’ scale.

Fichtel wasted no time settling into his digs at FC Schalke, helping the club improve progressively over the span of his first half decade with them, climbing the table slowly but surely built around his leadership and ability.

For as crucial as he was in his first fifteen years at the club, his return in his latter years was crucial on a whole different level. He returned as co-coach alongside Diethelm Ferner and moved into the center of defense, where he was a better fit for the time.

While Fichtel was at Bremen during Schalke’s relegation and return to the Bundesliga in 1982, he led the team to a DFB-Pokal Cup in 1972, their last major trophy (barring promotion back to the Bundesliga) in nearly thirty years.

Finally, an all-too-obvious No. 1.