The early league encounters between Green-and-White and Royal Blue were anything but colourful! The Wolves’ first three Bundesliga home matches against FC Schalke 04 all ended goalless – a rather curious record which no other Bundesliga pairing can claim to match. The teams have met on 48 occasions in total, with Schalke in the lead at the moment on 19 wins to VfL’s 13, with 16 draws.
On Wolfsburg territory, however, it has been slim pickings for the Miners, with 10 home wins for VfL and as many draws, leaving just four victories for S04 to look back on. Here are some more facts and figures ahead of the last home match of 2019:
The first ever VfL goal against Schalke was scored by legendary defender Ingo Eismann in a first-round cup tie held on 13 December 1970, which finished 2-2. Back then there were replays, and the second match also ended in a draw. The Green-and-Whites eventually went down 3-1 in the first ever penalty shootout in the competition’s history.
The two teams did not meet again for another 27 years, after the Wolves were promoted to the Bundesliga. After the opening match ended in one of those three 0-0 draws, the first meeting at Schalke also saw the points shared, Roy Präger scoring Wolfsburg’s first Bundesliga goal in Gelsenkirchen in a 1-1 draw.
The top scorers in a VfL shirt against Schalke are Grafite (8 goals), followed by Tomislav Maric and Edin Dzeko (5 each). For the opposition, the list reads Kevin Kuranyi (8 goals), Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (5) and Ebbe Sand (3).
David Wagner has a little bit of history with the Green-and-Whites. The current Schalke head coach played five second-tier matches for 1. FSV Mainz 05 against the Wolves between 1992 and the last match on 23 August 1994 at the Elsterweg, which ended in a 2-0 defeat for him.
Daniel Caligiuri, who won the DFB Cup with Wolfsburg in 2015, returns to his former stomping ground, while VfL also have one former opposition player in their ranks in Jeffrey Bruma, who spent the second half of the 2018/2019 season on loan in Gelsenkirchen.
