Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil

What do Vladimir Putin, David Hasselhoff and a shadowy businessman named The Meat Baron have in common? The remains of a fan-owned German football club that sold its soul, got stuck in the middle of a war, then woke up from a $200 million nightmare... to the basement of the standings. Correspondent Bradley Campbell travels to Gelsenkirchen, a mining town where soccer never stopped — and salvation was always a piece of merch away. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  This episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8. And look, I've chased down a lot of strange stories, but nothing quite like what's inside a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. It is 100% fresh beef, cooked right when you order it, with no artificial flavors, colors, fillers, or preservatives in the beef. The onions are hand-topped by someone who knows the perfect amount by memory, two slices of cheese and a star, and two pickles, side by side. So every bite gets both. And every time one's ordered, a cowbell sound rings in the kitchen. That's the grill master's cue to put a fresh patty on the grill. My move?

• 0:42Pablo Torre?

  QPC, fries and a drink after a long day of recording. That is my happy place. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only, only at McDonald's. For a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California. And for delivery, fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery.

• 1:09Speaker 01

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• 1:54Pablo Torre?

  This episode is brought to you by Apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools.

• 2:36Pablo Torre?

  It's used by sales teams of all sizes, from small businesses to larger organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at Apollo.io. That's Apollo.io. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours. And today, we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 3:14Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  You're listening to DraftKings Network.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  How's it going, man?

• 3:33Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I'm all right, but you're finishing... Is this lunch?

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Granola bar, which technically I guess is lunch right now.

• 3:40Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I've been tracking you across the office. I am always rushing around from thing to thing. You seem haggard, especially lately.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  It's been a stretch, dude.

• 3:49Pablo Torre?

  You are trying to be kind to yourself by eating a kind bar.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:55Pablo Torre?

  A real luxury.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  Oh, it's good. It's good. Well, dude, question.

• 3:59Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  Have you ever done something... And this will go somewhere. Have you ever done something to someone where you ask them to, you know, like, a favor for you? They do it, and only then afterwards do you realize that, oh man, you just asked him to do like something absolutely wretched.

• 4:16Pablo Torre?

  Yes. First time I moved out of my parents' apartment. Asked a friend, can you help me move, having never done it myself? And moving in New York is basically like, would you like to?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Would you like to be basically stuck in a set of stairs trying to maneuver a couch at like a

• 4:36Pablo Torre?

  Truly.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  64 degree angle.

• 4:38Pablo Torre?

  My good buddy Juan, I am so sorry, he got the bottom part of the couch. And I was like just steering it from the top, which is an unequal distribution of labor. So, yeah, I did that, which I am still living down.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  I did this with my cousin Max, who lives in Germany. And we were talking on Zoom, and I looked on, you know, kind of Google Maps? And I found out where he was at, and I'm like, oh dude, he's next to Borussia Dortmund.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Haaland's, Haaland's volley is beautiful beyond compare.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  And at that time, they were incredible. They had Aaron Holling, they had Christian Pulisic. Is there any chance, like, you could get me a hat?

• 5:22Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, you're that kind of cousin. You're like, oh wait, you're in, you're in Germany.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 5:26Pablo Torre?

  Can I get some merch?

• 5:27Speaker 03

  Can I get some merch? And he was just like, yeah, okay. So, so he gets one, and then I proudly like put the Borussia Dortmund hat on the next time we're on Zoom. And I'm like, Max, check out my hat. And he was like, yeah.

• 5:42Pablo Torre?

  He responded the way that Juan responded when I asked him to help me move a couch.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's, that's a good hat, Bradley. And I was like, what's up? And he was like, well, Borussia Dortmund, they're, they're our enemy. Like, we root for this team called Schalke, and we just hate Borussia Dortmund. And I'm just like, oh.

• 6:04Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. I wasn't familiar with the geopolitics of intra-German professional soccer clubs.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  It's huge.

• 6:12Pablo Torre?

  But apparently, Bradley, as I understand now where you're headed, yeah, this is, this is a thing.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  But then he told me, like, well, it's, it's okay. It's just, uh, it's been a hard time to be a Schalke fan. And I was like, what do you mean?

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Oh man, don't ask me. It's almost desperate to see what's going on at the moment, especially no one really knows.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  So of course I asked him. And he told me about this storied team of his, Schalke 04, one of the best in all of German football, just became dead inside.

• 6:49Speaker 05

  Well, fans described it as being blood empty. That's kind of a phrase we use here.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Blood empty?

• 6:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're standing on the field, blood empty. It's like standing on the field and leaving a hollow impression of yourself.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Wow, that's a great phrase. Yeah, that's a great, that's a great phrase.

• 7:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, welcome to the German language.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  He went on to tell me all about Schalke 04's downfall. And as he was doing this, I realized that it was a very German story, a Faustian tale, if you will. One involved a deal with the devil, the selling of a soul, and a story that dropped his favorite football club out of the top division and down into a geopolitical firestorm that our own president has said could lead us to World War III.

• 7:43Pablo Torre?

  Right. I have a sense now of your cousin Max.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 7:47Pablo Torre?

  God bless him, his favorite club. But in terms of the Faustian bargain here, this deal with the devil, who is the devil in this story?

• 7:58Speaker 03

  So at first, I had absolutely no idea. So I went to Germany to find out.

• 8:24Pablo Torre?

  Something very big is supposed to happen as early as today, Thursday, May 15th, 2025.

• 8:43Pablo Torre?

  What you're hearing there is Russian President Vladimir Putin proposing, earlier this week, to "restart peace talks" directly with Ukraine, the nation he'd invaded. And ostensibly, this would end the war that has impacted both all of Europe, certainly, as well as the United States. And what Putin says here is that these talks should "start without delay," as early as May 15. And look, the whims of Vladimir Putin, the whole way that his dictatorship in Russia can offer both destruction and salvation in one fell swoop, might not immediately seem

• 9:28Pablo Torre?

  like an urgent sports story to you. But what you're about to hear today in the story of Schalke 04, this big German soccer team, is a story that's about a lot more than just Europe, or international politics, or our correspondent Bradley Campbell's cousin, Max. This is a story about the strings that get attached to offers of sports salvation. Which means that this is a story about your favorite team, as well. So this is one of those stories that I greenlit not because I love German soccer. It's a story that I greenlit because there was this Faustian deal with the devil.

• 10:13Pablo Torre?

  And so when it comes to people who are not familiar with Faust and that deal, I mean, this is an omnipresent kind of story throughout human history.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  I mean, if you've seen The Little Mermaid, that's a Faustian tale. If you've watched Tenacious D and The Pick of Destiny, also Faustian tale.

• 10:30Pablo Torre?

  Right, The Little Mermaid gets to be among...

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Gets to walk.

• 10:35Pablo Torre?

  Among us, on land.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, Tenacious D gets to shred.

• 10:46Pablo Torre?

  That's right. But the original, right, which goes back centuries.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Seventeen hundreds. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:51Pablo Torre?

  Or earlier. It's about an astrologer who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. And that story ends, I suppose, quite literally with Faust, the astrologer, in hell.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. Which, judging from what we heard from Max and the blood-empty soccer team, is kind of where Schalkau was.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  I flew the overnight to Amsterdam, because it's a much cheaper flight.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  And then, gosh, I took a couple of different commuter rails.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  And then got to a little West German town called Gelsenkirchen. It felt like being on Amtrak and then going through the Alleghanies, and then all of a sudden landing in Pittsburgh.

• 11:41Pablo Torre?

  So as you look out the train window, it's Europe, but you're describing, at this point, a very familiar part of America.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Definitely, definitely. It had this vibe of industry and kind of this vibe of an area that's seen better days. It was the center of the mining region in Germany. But all the mines have been capped. So there's no mines anymore. They've switched from coal power to natural gas.

• 12:07Pablo Torre?

  Amid these rolling hills is a ruin that also hearkens back to this time when it was thriving.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  And it's full of fans with just a ton of hope and a ton of faith.

• 12:22Speaker 05

  Schalkau fans are notorious for illusionary optimism, basically. And you already heard the comments on the internet, on the radio. They scored a goal at the weekend, which is, at this point, is kind of rare. Okay, we scored a goal. We can win. If we win this game, we win the next game. We win the whole season. We get up and next year, we're going to be German champions. This whole crazy, loving fantasy of becoming the champion once again.

• 12:48Speaker 05

  Immediately kicks in.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  It's always like lottery or nothing. But then you start like walking through Gelsenkirchen. You're like, this is, this is a poor area. It's a lot of working class immigrants, a lot of them coming from Turkey. And then a ton of working class Catholics, so much that Pope John Paul II.

• 13:05Pablo Torre?

  I mean, this is the original.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  I know, the cool Pope. He visited the area in 1987 and is also, I learned, an honorary Schalke 04 member.

• 13:14Pablo Torre?

  So somewhere JP2 and Cousin Max are kindred spirits.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  And then also my grandmother as well. Her family owned a barge, an actual barge that they went up and down the Rhine River. Everyone had to pitch in and work, you know? It's kind of all hands to keep everything, everything afloat. And if the ship lists, you know, you gotta fix it yourself.

• 13:39Pablo Torre?

  Right, so this is the home of Schalke 04?

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 13:42Pablo Torre?

  For those like me who didn't know much about Schalke, when they clicked on this episode, what is the word you would use to describe just their sort of aesthetic, their vibe?

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Old.

• 13:58Pablo Torre?

  How old are we talking?

• 14:00Speaker 03

  They formed in 1904.

• 14:02Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so that's the 04.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  That's the 04 in Schalke 04. And God, they're, they're known as one of the historic clubs in Germany. Seven time German champions.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Although the last one was in 57, 58.

• 14:28Pablo Torre?

  And the visuals here, what does this place look like?

• 14:32Speaker 03

  It's up on a hill, it's right outside of town. So you've got grass field upon grass field. Everything just feels structured and efficient and German.

• 14:45Pablo Torre?

  It feels like a factory.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Completely, completely.

• 14:48Pablo Torre?

  And when you realize who they've produced, what this factory has put out into the world. So Mesut Ozil, Turkish, right? Son of Turkish immigrants?

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 14:59Pablo Torre?

  One of the greatest midfielders in the world.

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Those creative midfielders, for sure.

• 15:11Pablo Torre?

  And then, the greatest goalkeeper, many would argue.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Ever.

• 15:16Pablo Torre?

  Manuel Neuer is from there.

• 15:27Pablo Torre?

  The larger picture here is just that here is this factory, producing this raw material, and then refining it, along this assembly line, exporting it out to the wider football world.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  That truthfully is one of the coolest parts about Schalke 04 is that it's one of these rare professional teams that look like the town.

• 15:48Pablo Torre?

  So this team, when you look at the business of it, yeah, they're on the Forbes Top 10 list alongside Bayern Munich, alongside Barcelona, alongside Manchester United. These are the biggest brands in soccer.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  The other part that I liked is, they're completely owned by fans, but at times, it can put them in a bind.

• 16:08Pablo Torre?

  So the perspective I want to bring here is from Green Bay. So, Green Bay, the Packers.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:13Pablo Torre?

  This is considered in America the most populist case study in how to do something like this.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Completely.

• 16:18Pablo Torre?

  Fan-owned, lots and lots and lots of members, and I think it's Green Bay, hundreds of thousands. In this case, Schalke is dealing with how many members?

• 16:27Speaker 03

  190,000 members.

• 16:29Pablo Torre?

  But the idea is that like, there's no, there's no one billionaire owner. It's this mess of people.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  God knows that's my dream.

• 16:38Pablo Torre?

  To own a soccer club.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  But at least like, to have a say in some sort of team's direction, like where they're sailing, I think would be absolutely important, rather than having just like, you know, some billionaire owner's teenage sons, you know, deciding who to buy based on their Madden rating.

• 16:55Pablo Torre?

  Yes. Brooke Johnson, not a character in this specific story. And so, as they are living your dream, as they are voting on decisions, deciding collectively how to try to proceed with this idyllic populist football vision, in an era, of course, of billionaires, and petro-states, and oligarchs, and the deepest pockets you've ever seen in the history of sports, it does raise another concern about, so where is the money coming from, Bradley?

• 17:26Speaker 03

  That's the big question. I mean, you need massive amounts of money to compete at, at the highest levels of football.

• 17:31Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. Winning is correlated directly, across the board here, with money.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  So here begins our Faustian tale.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Enter the Meat Baron, a man named Clemens Tonys.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Who says, quote, "I am not a godfather."

• 17:54Pablo Torre?

  Which is totally a thing a godfather would say.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Hundred percent, hundred percent. He's like, "I don't like that term. There is no such thing as a godfather." Again, godfather vibes.

• 18:03Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so obviously, we want to meet the godfather.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Meat Baron was like, "Sorry dude." So he never responded to any of our emails. But we did talk to a German reporter from Reuters named Thesila Hummel.

• 18:14Speaker 06

  5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Who's an expert in all things Meat Baron.

• 18:19Speaker 06

  It's a very, very fascinating character, you know? I mean, he's originally a butcher. He grew up in post-war Germany. He often told the tale how poor everybody was back then and how much he's kind of rooted in the working class, which he truly is.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  He says that Tonys transformed from butcher to effectively running the Tyson Chicken of West Germany.

• 18:48Speaker 06

  And he was a big, big, big Schalke 04 fan for his whole life. I mean, being a Schalke fan is something that you're born into. It's something that is so much part of that working class identity in that part of Germany.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  And he couldn't just dump his own money into it. There's rules preventing that.

• 19:10Pablo Torre?

  That meat money wasn't good.

• 19:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So what he had to do is he had to catch one of these like giant big fish sponsors that they could put across like the crest, right across the front of their jersey. Think like crypto.com for the Lakers.

• 19:23Pablo Torre?

  They need a sponsor, in other words. It's very American, ideal, and so...

• 19:28Speaker 03

  So they got Gazprom.

• 19:31Pablo Torre?

  Gazprom.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  A state-owned Russian natural gas supplier, huge industrial giant. But at that time,

• 19:43Speaker 06

  No one ever really heard of that company. I mean, their business was selling gas to kind of bulk clients to other German, like German utilities. They didn't really have consumers. So the brand was completely unknown. It popped up out of the blue and suddenly it was everywhere.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  They went to Schalke and they did this presentation. This is why Gazprom is great. So I actually found a guy in Germany who was in the room where it happened.

• 20:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, I remember. I was actually at the at the presentation of Gazprom with my daughter. So yeah, it was 2007. She was four years old. So first time that she was in the stadium.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  This is Axel Hafer. He's the current chairman of Schalke 04. And Truffaut Pablo, he actually saw a connection between this giant, state-run natural gas supplier and this tiny mining town in Germany.

• 20:39Speaker 07

  When Gazprom was presented, there was, they basically shot a commercial where you had Gazprom employees somewhere in Siberia that were drilling for gas. So and that was very similar to, you know, the mining images that we all had in our minds. So it looked like a very good fit. It was actually a good fit at that time.

• 20:59Pablo Torre?

  And so Gazprom, when they saw Schalke, what were they seeing in this club?

• 21:06Speaker 03

  So they were also using Schalke as marketing. They had this really big goal of creating a second pipeline, connecting Russia to Germany, even more of their natural gas called Nord Stream 2 was the big project, as in the second Nord Stream pipeline.

• 21:21Speaker 08

  The Nord Stream pipeline is one of the world's largest infrastructure projects along a carefully chosen 1,224-kilometer route to transport 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Russia to the European Union.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  They thought that sponsoring a major historic German soccer club would be a great way to get that done.

• 21:43Speaker 07

  Everybody was happy. This was, oh, this is a good deal. This is a very big company. It's very important. It's a good partner. Relationships with Russia have historically been very good. So between Germany and Russia. So in 2007, I would say absolutely fine.

• 21:59Pablo Torre?

  So now I'm getting a sense of the devil in this story.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Well, actually, no, Pablo, I think it's important that we step back here for just a minute. And it's kind of wild to think now, but during this period of time, Russia and Putin were considered great business partners. And I learned this from that Reuters reporter, Tissalo Hummel.

• 22:20Speaker 06

  The first thing is that, look, Putin wasn't the devil. He wasn't the devil for Tanya. He wasn't the devil for Schalke. He was the devil for nobody in Germany 15 years ago. That's just not how it was.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  And the same thing in the US at the time. If you remember, there was President Barack Obama.

• 22:40Pablo Torre?

  Familiar with that guy?

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, mocked then, you know, mocked Senator Mitt Romney for holding, quote, "antiquated views on Russia."

• 22:48Speaker 09

  A few months ago, when you were asked, "What's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America?", you said Russia, not Al Qaeda. You said Russia. In the 1980s, are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years.

• 23:03Pablo Torre?

  But Putin, to the West, looking like an ally, like an economic engine.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:09Pablo Torre?

  I admittedly, yeah, forgot about this entirely.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  I think it's important when we hear Axel from Schalke and listen to him, you got to even magnify it more because Germany, they're absolutely familiar in dealing with communist leaders and businesses in a way that I would say few, if any, other Western democracies are because their country at one point was split east and west.

• 23:31Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, that was the whole wall thing, I believe.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  Culminating with arguably the greatest moment in world history.

• 23:40Pablo Torre?

  So I like that you have power ranked all of the moments in world history. And the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bradley Campbell's number one slot.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, but more specifically.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  David Hasselhoff, dancing and singing atop the Berlin Wall while it fell,

• 24:03Speaker 03

  wearing a black leather jacket, stone-washed denim.

• 24:07Pablo Torre?

  I do not apologize for liking that a lot.

• 24:14Pablo Torre?

  So, this has now become so much more German than I even anticipated when I greenlit a story about German soccer and German politics.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 24:23Pablo Torre?

  So Schalke has accepted this deal with Gazprom. And so, the question, I suppose, is how much did they know that there were these strings attached? How much Faust did they know was gonna be in this bargain?

• 24:36Speaker 03

  I mean, that's the nature of a Faustian bargain, is you don't really know in real time how bad it will get.

• 24:43Speaker 07

  We are not only getting a very good deal and getting better money for what we are offering than with other partners. We were not getting that for free. So I guess the price for that was obviously, you know, political greenwashing, if you want to say so, but also the risk that something would happen.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  Something did.

• 25:12Pablo Torre?

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• 25:43Pablo Torre?

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• 26:27Pablo Torre?

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• 26:51Pablo Torre?

  I'm pretty sure this won't shock anyone out there, but buying a car is just a hard process. You have to figure out what you want from thousands of options, then you have to find somewhere that's offering a good deal, then you get hit with unexpected fees. But let's just break it down, and think about how you describe your ideal car to a friend. You know, something like, "Good gas mileage, four-wheel drive, reliable, under 30 grand." Luckily, CarGurus makes it that easy. Just describe it to CarGurus the same way. With Guru, you search in your own words and you get listings, real listings, that match. No endless filters, just the car that fits your life. CarGurus also helps you shop with more transparent pricing, allowing you to see when dealer fees are included

• 27:35Pablo Torre?

  so you can compare listings with greater confidence. And with more than 4 million listings, CarGurus has the biggest selection of cars. So it's easier than ever to find the right car and the right deal. It is no wonder CarGurus is the number one most-visited car shopping site according to SimilarWeb's estimated traffic data. So buy or sell your next car today with CarGurus at cargurus.com. Go to cargurus.com to make sure your big deal is the best deal. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S dot com. Cargurus.com.

• 28:13Speaker 10

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 28:28Speaker 11

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 28:39Speaker 10

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 28:44Speaker 12

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 28:50Speaker 10

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 29:18Pablo Torre?

  So I'm thinking about the original astrologer, Faust, who makes this deal with the devil for knowledge and power and gets it. And it is awesome.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 29:27Pablo Torre?

  Right? For some amount of time. So what did that look like for Schalke 04? The high of getting all of this power?

• 29:36Speaker 03

  It was pure domination. The first year that they did the deal with Gazprom, Schalke went second place in the Bundesliga. But more than that, the next year, they reached the quarterfinals of the Champions League.

• 29:50Speaker 13

  German teams have ambushed Manchester United Champions League campaigns before, but Radek Ferguson can hardly ask for more than a semifinal against a mid-table Bundesliga side.

• 30:00Pablo Torre?

  And so this team that hadn't won in Germany since the 50s is now competing to the point where they make the Champions League semifinals in 2011.

• 30:11Pablo Torre?

  They are playing Manchester United, again, one of the top brands, one of the top clubs in the world.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  With the best players.

• 30:17Pablo Torre?

  And things are going better than anybody could have thought.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  And Gasprom, like, they're living life at this point, too. This is 2011. They ink a deal to get Nord Stream 2 up and running.

• 30:34Pablo Torre?

  They get their pipeline, their sequel.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  Exactly. They get the sequel. But then comes 2014 Pablo, and that is when the story truly follows the tale of Faust.

• 30:47Speaker 14

  More than 200,000 protesters gathered in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev today furious over the government's refusal to sign a trade agreement with the European Union. Police used tear gas in clubs to beat back demonstrators who surrounded President Viktor Yanukovych's office.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Ukrainians overthrow their president in the Maidan Revolution. Russia responds by annexing Crimea by force.

• 31:11Speaker 15

  Russian troops spreading out throughout the strategic Crimean peninsula. President Obama speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  And during this hostile takeover of Crimea, a lot of Shalke fans are, um, they're pissed.

• 31:28Speaker 07

  It started to be more and more controversial. I guess from an economical perspective, it was financially still a very attractive deal. But the discussion that we had at that time was, okay, is it worth the risk?

• 31:40Speaker 16

  There is a growing international chorus slamming Russia's actions. The British Prime Minister saying there is no excuse. Canada withdrawing its ambassador from Moscow.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  For the EU and the US, it was clear that not really. They imposed sanctions on Russian and Ukrainian officials linked to the Crimean takeover. They said it was, quote, "undermining the democratic process and institutions in Ukraine."

• 32:05Speaker 17

  The Russian military must stand down. The aspirations of the Ukrainian people must be respected, and political dialogue must be allowed to continue.

• 32:16Pablo Torre?

  And so this is where I am familiar with the West's view of Russia, right? Like Obama made that joke, this isn't the 80s anymore.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  Turns out it is.

• 32:23Pablo Torre?

  And now, if you're Schalke, the pressure clearly would be to cut ties with Vladimir Putin's gas giants. Like, how can you possibly be the team with Gazprom across your chest in all these ways?

• 32:37Speaker 07

  It's politics, yeah? So you have different views there. And we have 190,000 members. So you have everything from the far left to the far right. I mean, everything there. So in the board, some people were a bit more skeptical. Some said, okay, it's still a good partner. Yes, there are political problems, but we are a sports club and that's not our problem. So for me personally, I mean, I never bought a Gazprom jersey. So, um, so because I just thought, okay, yeah, no, doesn't, doesn't feel right.

• 33:04Pablo Torre?

  This is him sticking to sports, right? This is another refrain we are familiar with in America.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  And so the partnership with Gazprom continues, as Tissalo Hunter from Reuters told me.

• 33:15Speaker 06

  Maybe that should have been the moment where people should have changed their minds and kind of updated their, do a software update in their, in their, in their strategic thinking, which Ternyaz and Schalke did not do. And you can say that maybe from that point in time, it became really a grave mistake and it went downwards ever since.

• 33:40Pablo Torre?

  Well, the fact that the 2018-2019 season happens, as that is happening, right? So I'm going back to the record that I'm consulting here. They make another run in the Champions League.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, they make it to the round of 16. But that's when they run into a club who made an even bigger deal with an even more powerful entity.

• 34:01Speaker 18

  Four places in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League are confirmed. Four more will be decided this week with Manchester City and Schalke set to complete their round of 16 time with a second.

• 34:13Pablo Torre?

  Right, so Manchester City might be the prime example of what you need to take over this sport.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  The deal you need to make.

• 34:22Pablo Torre?

  So they made a deal with a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. And so as a matter of scale, yeah, like Schalke 04 is Faustian bargain. This is not raiding in comparison to Man City.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  I feel like there's a lesson here, you know? Like, no matter how rich you are.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Someone's always richer than you.

• 34:54Pablo Torre?

  And I just gotta jump in here for a second to put an even finer point on this observation. Because as much as you might think that Vladimir Putin's favorite state-owned energy company would have more than enough in its pockets, Manchester City is indeed owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family, which bought it in 2008, 2009. And this makes Manchester City the single richest club in the entire Premier League. They have spent billions on buying players. This most recent transfer window, in fact. They just outspent everybody else. And none of this is especially close. And so, in that pivotal round of 16 against Man City in 2019,

• 35:38Pablo Torre?

  Schalke loses 10 to 2 on aggregate. At which point, [BLEEP] really spins out of control. Schalke proceeds to finish in 12th place the following season.

• 35:51Speaker 03

  Then the meat bear makes dumbass comments about Africans that anger the fanbase. Rightfully so, I would add.

• 35:57Pablo Torre?

  And then the whole pandemic happens, meaning that Schalke's fans slash owners can't even get into their building anymore, which cuts off the team's revenues at the knees. And as for what is happening in front of those now-empty seats, the team goes winless in its first 14 matches.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  They've learned through five different managers and finished the season dead last in the league by a lot.

• 36:24Pablo Torre?

  But the worst part about finishing dead last in the league in such a way was the fact that Schalke then got relegated. Down to the second division.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  And because it's COVID, there's no market for players. So they just get deeper and deeper in debt. Then a COVID outbreak hits the Meat Baron's factories.

• 36:45Pablo Torre?

  Of course.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  PR nightmare. And the Meat Baron, after 19 years, finally steps down.

• 36:51Pablo Torre?

  Which is all to say that the Gazprom era of Shalke 04, beyond being morally compromised by Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula, also wasn't going great on the pitch. And so the Meat Baron, who I cannot help but think of at the end of that insane litany of events, government named Clements Tonys. The Meat Baron, did he get any sort of cosmic punishment for his role in this bargain, for leading Shalke down this particularly crazy path?

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Nah.

• 37:27Speaker 06

  For Tonys personally, not so much for the club, but for Tonys personally, the whole thing still made huge sense. He made money in Russia. So I'm not even sure if he feels like Faust himself.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  So he was fine, but the fans weren't. And when I was in Germany, I talked to some, and they're just like, who are we? And what happened to our soul? And I guess even worse was this knowledge that they were still falling. Their club was still getting worse and going down and down. And they hadn't hit rock bottom yet.

• 38:06Pablo Torre?

  It does feel like there should be a German word for that feeling.

• 38:11Speaker 03

  Blood empty.

• 38:21Pablo Torre?

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• 39:02Pablo Torre?

  Just mix a packet of Instant Hydration with water and I am feeling ready to push through to the end of the day. For a better way to stay hydrated, go to instanthydration.com/ptfo and use my promo code PTFO for over 40% off your first subscription order. It's Instant Hydration's best offer available. That's instanthydration.com/ptfo, promo code PTFO. Cozy makes furniture for the part of life that nobody warns you about. Getting the couch into the room, making the room feel like you, then actually living on it, spills and all. With Cozy, your home can grow with you by adapting to new spaces, new styles, and every era of your life. It's modular furniture, so you can actively adjust your furniture to fit any space.

• 39:47Pablo Torre?

  It's all built around making the entire home comfortable and easy so that your stuff works with your life, not around it. The covers are washable and interchangeable, so a refresh is only one wash away and the spill goes from panic to shrug. And it all ships to your door in easy-to-move boxes. Plus, Cozy's free one-on-one design consultations make the whole home vision a lot less intimidating. Cozy has everything you need to make your home feel like it has a plan because Cozy makes every part of the process easy. So, visit Cozy today. That's C-O-Z-E-Y dot com and make yourself at home.

• 40:23Pablo Torre?

  Life in 2026 is tough. We all have our struggles and we could all use some help. But trying to figure out how to get the right mental health treatment for you can feel overwhelming. Talkiatory helps you move from "I know I need help" to actually having a psychiatrist who listens and a clear personalized treatment plan. Talkiatory is 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, and more. With Talkiatory, you can meet with a licensed psychiatrist who takes the time to understand what's going on, builds a personalized treatment plan, and supports you over time with consistent, evidence-based care.

• 41:07Pablo Torre?

  And all 800-plus clinicians are in-network with major insurers, so you can use your existing insurance instead of paying monthly subscriptions or out-of-network costs. Head to talkiatory.com/ptfo to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y.com/ptfo to get matched in minutes. Talkiatory.com/ptfo. So this brings us now to February 2022. And in the sports calendar, this is a familiar point. The Winter Olympics in Sochi have just finished up.

• 41:49Pablo Torre?

  Vladimir Putin, Russian pride, everyone's riding high. And then...

• 41:55Speaker 19

  Right now, there is a sound of bombardment coming from all around us, and all of the civilians from this area are fleeing.

• 42:02Speaker 07

  I still remember that week. Absolutely crazy. So you basically had the troops starting to move, and it was obvious that something could happen.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  So again, that's Axel, who I met up with in Germany, Chairman of Schalke 4. And he was really remembering this time where it wasn't this question of "Is Russia gonna invade?", it was this question of "When are they going to invade Ukraine?"

• 42:29Speaker 07

  It was highly likely that something would happen. And so just the weekend before the invasion... We started to get enormous pressure. "Okay, you need to terminate the contract. You need to take Gazprom on your jersey, etc."

• 42:42Speaker 03

  So some fans already had. They actually put duct tape across the Gazprom on the jersey so you couldn't see it, covering up that logo. But the board that they had elected continued to kind of wait.

• 42:54Speaker 07

  We're not the richest club and we will never be the richest club. And our fans are not the richest. But it's a very emotional club and that's obviously what is once more important than anything else. So you need to keep the feeling of belonging and really helping each other. That is more important than a bit more money, as long as it doesn't kill you. That's the thing.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  So that is a bind for Axel and Schalke to have to figure out.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  And it's like you're trying to protect this thing that you love. And it's like, you know, it's not just simply just cutting ties to make a statement.

• 43:32Speaker 07

  Exactly. And that was exactly the challenge that we all had was, okay, are we willing to risk the existence of the club to do the right thing? And how could we actually derisk that scenario?

• 43:45Speaker 03

  So they were working on Pablo 24/7, talking to Gazprom's representatives. It was actually, they were open to it because Nord Stream 2, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. So getting out of contracts was the priority, but you know that that takes time, which is something they didn't have.

• 44:04Speaker 07

  So during that week, I basically did nothing else than just talking 24/7 with everybody. Because obviously, everybody was very nervous. And this balance of what is exactly the right point in time where we can, we can basically manage the financial risk and still do the right thing, we had to find it.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  The thing that they really needed was a new source of money.

• 44:31Speaker 07

  We started discussions with, actually with the old mining association. So the company that used to operate all the mines is still active and has a few assets. And we basically went to them and said, listen, if something happens, is there anything that we could do? And they said, yeah, for sure, we will help you.

• 44:50Speaker 07

  If you need to do it, we will support you. We will basically find some money and we will basically step in as an interim sponsor.

• 44:58Pablo Torre?

  So just to recap this, what Axel is saying is that they go from Gazprom, Vladimir Putin's state-owned gas giant, to a local union, which doesn't have nearly the amount of money that they have. But it is, it's that all-hands concept again. You know, just the whole community rallying together to step up. But you know, while this is happening, I want to be like, oh, it's all warm and lovely. The Russian troops are still there.

• 45:25Speaker 07

  And yeah, then we had on Thursday morning, 4 a.m., or I can't remember the exact time, it was basically before everybody got up. Obviously, the invasion started.

• 45:35Speaker 20

  Russian troops are closing in on the capital. Their military vehicles have been filmed entering the city. And in the last few hours, multiple explosions have been reported. Exact figures are unknown, but there are reports of large numbers of Ukrainian casualties, both military and civilian, since the invasion began, and of Russian military deaths.

• 45:55Speaker 21

  Streams of people...

• 45:57Pablo Torre?

  And so at this point in the story of Faust,

• 46:01Pablo Torre?

  what happens is that he is condemned and judged for the deal he has struck. In the middle of the night, to put the most literary sort of emphasis on this, "A pack of devils carry his soul to hell," Bradley. So is that what happens to Schalke 04 here?

• 46:20Speaker 03

  Kinda, yeah. But it's a lot slower of a death, which is in some ways a little bit crueler. You know, without a massive sponsor in the club in disarray, they drop again back to the second division, and they risk an even further drop to the third division.

• 46:36Pablo Torre?

  And that's the devil. The devil's carrying them to the netherworld.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're struggling each week just to survive. And for fans, it's just pure psychological torture. They're watching this team just absolutely stink on the field.

• 46:50Pablo Torre?

  Your cousin. I cannot help but think.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  It's so bad.

• 46:53Pablo Torre?

  Of Cousin Mac.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Worse than that, Pablo, is that there's a rule that if you're in the third division, you have to be financially stable. Schalke wasn't stable, so if the worst comes to worst, we're actually going to be forced to drop down to the amateur level. And so I'm not even being hyperbolic when I say like, each week was facing annihilation?

• 47:15Pablo Torre?

  When it comes to identifying the devil, which is the reason you went searching in Gelsenkirchen in Germany in the first place, the devil isn't exactly Russia in our story, right? The devil seems to be the pursuit of money, frankly.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  And the loss of control.

• 47:33Pablo Torre?

  And the loss of control.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  They needed to center themselves in a way, just kind of overcome these massive mistakes. And again, they had so much debt, so they had to be smart about it. And you know, they put out a call, I guess, or you know, cast nets to try and find which Schalke 04 member anywhere in the world could help them out.

• 47:56Pablo Torre?

  And who did they end up finding?

• 47:58Speaker 03

  Let's go, let's go. How's it going? Good. Yeah? Game day? Game day, yeah. Matthias Tillmann, and he's been a fan of Schalke since he was five years old, and bought his first jersey, which is a right of any, you know, upstanding Schalke member, nearly three decades ago.

• 48:18Speaker 22

  It was in 1994.

• 48:23Speaker 22

  And since then, I bought one or two jerseys every year, always with a favorite player. So I collect jerseys, so I have a lot.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  So he moved back to Germany and started doing the Lord's work, man. I'm like, I don't know if you've seen a recent photo of Daryl Morey, but...

• 48:39Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah, I mean, I've seen Daryl recently. And dude is aging. Speaking of US presidents, he's aging like one.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  I mean, running a losing franchise is just absolutely brutal.

• 48:49Speaker 22

  So I wake up every day at 6 a.m. So that's the same, every single day. But I have four kids. So yeah, you have to get up and bring them to school, to kindergarten. And then I drive here, so it's like 30, 35 minute drive for me. And then normally I arrive here, I have one other colleague in the management board, and we discuss the most important things of the day. And yeah, then obviously as a CEO, you have a lot to manage.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  It is truly a massive amount of work.

• 49:22Speaker 22

  That's what it takes. That's what it takes, yeah.

• 49:24Pablo Torre?

  Which is a Faustian bargain of a different kind.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  But it's a different sort of pact.

• 49:31Speaker 22

  A lot of people in this region,

• 49:34Speaker 22

  they spend every penny they have on this club and spend all their time for this club. And yeah, that's why this club is more than just football.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  So the love is genuine, but let's get real. Dude was a former investment banker for Deutsche Bank. He was hired to kick ass. And that's exactly what he's doing. He realizes that, yeah, the club's got a lot of heart, but it's time for it to get a little professional, too.

• 50:03Pablo Torre?

  But how do you do that when you're loaded down with all of this insane debt from the Gazprom Meat Baron era?

• 50:10Speaker 22

  Five years ago, we had debt around 200 million, 220.

• 50:16Speaker 22

  But we had, the value of our squad was also 200 million. Today, it's around, the value of the squad is around 20 million, but we still carry 160 million debt. So the ratio has changed. And we are coming from a time where we had over 300 million in revenue to where we have just over 100.

• 50:35Pablo Torre?

  What a nightmare. 200 million to 20.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  It's real, it's real.

• 50:40Pablo Torre?

  I mean, that's an insane fall.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And I guess his big goal is just to get the debt down to 50 million dollars, which he says is a manageable size. And look, he's upfront with the fans. He's like, our football club, it's gonna suck for a year or two. But with patience, there will be a pathway back up to the top.

• 50:59Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, you're describing, you know, trust the process, which I, of course, personally have some fondness for. But you're talking about a rebuild. This is an old fashioned rebuild.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  100%, it's a rebuild. But again, a rebuild with 190,000 fans voicing in on how to rebuild it. And so, oh my God, Matthias gets absolutely pummeled in the newspapers for this process. So what his answer was is they're gonna have another separate cooperative that will run Veltan's Arena, which is like the Madison Square Garden. So people will be able to buy a stake in the co-op separate from Schalke 04. And also businesses will be allowed to buy shares in this too. That is the solution. And it's gonna be run completely independently of the other club as a way to generate money.

• 51:51Pablo Torre?

  And with that money, with this new revenue stream, what do they want to do? Like, are they buying soccer players? Are they improving their facilities? What's their goal?

• 52:01Speaker 03

  It's all of that. I mean, the goal is to get back up to the top division. And so whatever that takes. But I think the bigger goal than that, it's local control.

• 52:09Pablo Torre?

  Which is also a philosophy, I now understand, that is adored, true to this region, for sure.

• 52:17Speaker 22

  What I think is important that you don't lose your DNA. And I think that is in Schalke, it's very important. Like what I said in the beginning, like everybody knows where we're coming from. Our roots are here in that region from the coal mining. And I think for us, it's very important to be the club of the region for the people in the region. And the values have not changed. They're still the same. Hardworking people and you have to honor that.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, look, man, they're not gonna ever replicate the size or money or deep pockets of a state.

• 52:55Pablo Torre?

  No.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  A natural gas company. But I guess you asked me earlier, when are the angels gonna come? Who are these angels? And the simple answer is the angels are themselves. It's like Schalke is gonna pick Schalke back up.

• 53:08Speaker 22

  Investors come and go. They want to make money. They have whatever their interest is. But people here will stay. There's a saying here that players will come and go. Even CEOs will come and go, but we will stay. It's us. And that's why we have to determine the future and not other people. And once you're on that ship, you feel the energy. That's why I think when you are there in the stadium, it's a different atmosphere. Because people know that's our ship and we can determine the direction. And that, I think, makes a big difference.

• 53:42Pablo Torre?

  And so now I kind of feel like I'm on your grandma's barge. Or also perhaps a Bernie Sanders event. My skepticism here is is simple, though. Like, how do you win in this era of soccer? How do you win against the Petro states and oligarchs and sovereign wealth funds? And the deepest pockets in the history of sports?

• 54:03Speaker 03

  I really wanna say you just do it with your own gumption. But I don't know, man. After the meeting with Matthias, I walked over to Veltten's Arena for a match against FC Kaiserslautern, who happened to be nicknamed the Red Devils.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  Just gets too perfect sometimes.

• 54:22Pablo Torre?

  Bit on the nose, but...

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got in there and, um, God, it was like an absolute rock concert. Fortunately, we couldn't film there, so you've just gotta imagine this. You're walking into a giant arena and it's sold out. There's 62,075 fans and they are screaming their heads off before the game even starts. I'm thinking they're gonna crush.

• 54:47Pablo Torre?

  Well, how does it go? How does the crushing go?

• 54:49Speaker 03

  The devil just absolutely pummels them.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  Schalke can maybe salvage some pride right now. It's Kaisan coming forward and scything them apart as Deiske Yocota makes it three.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  They get beat three to nothing, but someone else was in there with me and I had no idea. And that was Cousin Max. He was in the stadium. He got like a last second ticket, bought it, and so he was there watching. I had no idea, but...

• 55:20Pablo Torre?

  That feels cosmic too, though.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  I know, I know. It really does, it really does. And the reason why it does is because I was just thinking about a lot of things, but one of them was like, good God, how much of a [BLEEP] I was.

• 55:32Pablo Torre?

  That's probably what this episode is about, is you being a terrible relative.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I'm like, here's this absolutely beautiful thing that was at the risk of just like, um, not continuing, and here I am asking, hey dude, can I get you a Borussia Dortmund hat, man?

• 55:49Pablo Torre?

  Knowing nothing about anything.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Oh my God, nothing about anything. And it's just absolutely stunning. And I didn't even tell you, like beforehand, they actually, they had a minor's choir sing a sonnet beforehand just to like warm everything up.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  There's like so much to love about this community and, uh, yeah, it was, it was just beautiful.

• 56:20Pablo Torre?

  So what, what do you decide to do with these feelings now that are sloshing inside of you?

• 56:26Speaker 03

  I decided to board the ship.

• 56:43Speaker 03

  Pablo, I'm abandoning my journalistic integrity.

• 56:50Pablo Torre?

  And so, near the end here, Bradley, this video that you're playing is what?

• 56:55Speaker 03

  It's me signing my name to a document that made me an official member of Schalke 04.

• 57:02Pablo Torre?

  Right, so this is you becoming one of the 190,000 members.

• 57:07Speaker 03

  190,001. I'm also in the process of buying a share of the Co-op.

• 57:13Pablo Torre?

  Right, which is just the most Brooklyn [BLEEP].

• 57:15Speaker 03

  This whole time, you've been talking to the co-owner of a German professional soccer team, and, I would add, a budding real estate magnet of Gelsenkirchen.

• 57:27Pablo Torre?

  And so, if you are now wondering how Bradley Campbell's new soccer club is doing as its season draws to a close, I do have a bit of news here.

• 57:40Pablo Torre?

  Schalke 04, which had been playing in the second division of German soccer this season, has spent all year trying to climb out of this hole left by Gazprom and, yes, their own generally horrible decision-making. The prospect of being sent down to the third division was looming.

• 58:00Pablo Torre?

  But we here at Pablo Torre Finds Out are happy to now tell you that while Schalke 04 is yet again coming down to the final match this weekend, meaning that, yes, Putin's alleged peace talks and Schalke's future are once again intersecting, it does appear that they have fended off relegation this season.

• 58:23Pablo Torre?

  And things did not look good for a while here, to be clear.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  We fixed ourselves, and, you know, we're marching our way back up to daylight once more.

• 58:33Pablo Torre?

  I just got two questions before we get so truly, like, highfalutin celestial about this. Where's the hat?

• 58:40Speaker 03

  The hat?

• 58:41Pablo Torre?

  The Borussia Dortmund hat that is responsible for why we are here doing this story.

• 58:45Speaker 03

  Oh, I made amends.

• 58:48Speaker 03

  Here it is.

• 58:48Pablo Torre?

  So, okay, so the black and yellow familiar Borussia Dortmund logo has been vandalized. In a, what an expert way it has been painted over here, but describe what this is.

• 59:03Speaker 03

  We crossed out the '09 and we put an S04 across the BBD.

• 59:10Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  In bright royal blue letters.

• 59:13Pablo Torre?

  Incredible rebranding. On that question of rebranding, my second question, my final question on the show today.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:21Pablo Torre?

  Is, did Schalke 04 ever get a new sponsor? Like, what replaced Gazprom across the jersey? What's the, what are you doing?

• 59:30Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm here.

• 59:34Pablo Torre?

  So, this is a...

• 59:35Speaker 03

  That's my jersey.

• 59:36Pablo Torre?

  Beautiful, beautiful blue and white Sun Mini-Mule.

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 59:43Pablo Torre?

  Sun Mini-Mule. What is Sun Mini-Mule across the chest of your jersey?

• 59:49Speaker 03

  It's a Swiss granola bar.

• 59:52Pablo Torre?

  Goddamn.

• 1:00:02Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 1:00:08Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

• 1:00:25Speaker 21

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile. Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet? No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen. No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you. Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 1:00:50Speaker 23

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 1:00:54Speaker 24

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