Bundesliga: Schalke threaten Tasmania Berlin as worst ever team

Schalke are one game away from equalling Tasmania Berlin’s tally of 31 winless games, a Bundesliga record that has stood for 54 years. Tasmania’s captain from that awful season has some words of advice for Schalke.

Just one game stands between Schalke and history - but it's not the kind of history that Schalke are looking to write.

If they fail to beat Hoffenheim this Saturday, they will equal the Bundesliga's longest ever winless run of 31 games, a record that Tasmania Berlin have held since 1966. Given that their star striker would frequently turn up to training drunk, it's some achievement by Schalke.

It's almost a year since Schalke's last league victory, a 2-0 win against Borussia Mönchengladbach on January 17, 2020. Since then they've plunged into financial crisis, sold their best players, fired their technical director, got through four coaches and have a locker room full of players whose confidence is at rock bottom.

The club faces a myriad of problems on and off the field, which is culminating in this historically dreadful run of results. Last month, forward Mark Uth, one of Schalke's most experienced players, described their football as "helpless" and admitted that he felt like crying.

Historic ineptitude

The Bundesliga has seen extended winless streaks before. As recently as 2018-19, Nuremberg endured a 20-game winless run, one short of Kaiserslautern's 21-game winless run in 2011-12. Neither side have been seen in Germany's top flight since.

If there's one club that can identify with Schalke's current nightmare better than anyone in Germany, it's Tasmania Berlin.

They are famous for one thing and one thing only: historic ineptitude.

Tasmania were briefly the best team in Berlin in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but when the Bundesliga was formed in 1963, underhand tactics by Hertha Berlin's president allowed them to represent Berlin in the Bundesliga's inaugural season – at Tasmania's expense.