Esports podcast: The Schalke they call "God"

With the footballers from FC Schalke 04, one would prefer not to include the year 2020 in the club history.

The team has not won 25 games in a row in the Bundesliga, the negative record of Tasmania Berlin is getting dangerously close.

With only three points, the team is at the bottom of the table.

There is little hope in Gelsenkirchen at the moment.

The footballers have the best role model on how to get out of their own misery in their own club.

The Royal Blues' League of Legends team also went through a deep, athletic valley last season.

After a hopeful first half of the season, the second half of Europe's top division, the League of Legends European Championship (LEC), began with an extended series of defeats.

Schalke 04 Esports lost seven games in a row and was beaten at the bottom of the table.

Here, too, experts saw the club heading for a historic series of defeats.

Memories of 2016 were awakened when the Schalke-based pioneering "League of Legends" project had to accept its first severe setback after only a few months with its relegation to the second division.

An unexpected hero

This year things went differently - and that was due to a player who was no longer really on the list.

Berk "Gilius" Demir was already in the first Schalke squad in 2016 and was relegated with the team.

But experiences like these have shaped the 23-year-old today.

Such setbacks were nothing new for him, triumph and defeat were often close together in his career.

His career started with a World Cup participation at the age of 17 and a subsequent contract with a top European team.

This was followed by difficult years, in which he wandered from team to team and repeatedly ended up in the second division.

In 2020 Schalke took him under contract again after strong performances in the German league.

But after a good start he was replaced in the first team.

He had little part in the sporting failure of Schalke in the second half of the season, because at that time he only played in the reserve team.

A historic comeback

When the season was already looking hopeless, Demir slipped into the starting XI.

And suddenly the whole situation turned.

Against the top team Fnatic, Schalke won their first win of the season - and after that they simply never stopped winning.

The team won seven games in a row by the end of the season, slipping from last place into the playoffs.

There had never been a run like this in the league.

The man of the hour was "Gilius".

He showed outstanding performances in a row, was in a few games a candidate for the award as player of the season.

The really big happy end for Schalke did not materialize, the team failed in the second round of the playoffs and so narrowly missed participation in the World Cup in China.

For Demir, the playing time was definitely worth it: He got a new contract with Royal Blue and has once again proven to everyone that he is still one of the best players in the league.

In our podcast »Game Changer« we talk to »Gilius« about the Schalke comeback, the so-called »Miracle Run«, his fairytale career start, but also about the difficult phases and the setbacks in his career.

Curious?

 Scroll to the podcast player at the beginning of the article and listen to the seventh episode of our new SPIEGEL miniseries »Game Changer«.

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