Bradley Campbell
Appearances
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
a state-owned Russian natural gas supplier, huge industrial giant.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
This is Axel Hafer. He's the current chairman of Schalke 04. And truthfully, Pablo, he actually saw a connection between this giant state-run natural gas supplier and this tiny mining town in Germany.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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. It was in the second Nord Stream pipeline.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
They thought that sponsoring a major historic German soccer club would be a great way to get that done.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And moving in New York is basically like, would you like to... Would you like to be basically stuck in a set of stairs trying to maneuver a couch at like a 64 degree angle?
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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, Tisalo Hamel.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And the same thing in the U.S. at the time. If you remember, there was a president, Barack Obama, kind of mocked.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Yeah, mocked then. You know, mocked Senator Mitt Romney for holding, quote, antiquated views on Russia.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
I admittedly, yeah, forgot about this entirely. 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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Yeah, that was the whole wall thing. Yeah. I believe. Culminating with arguably the greatest moment in world history.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Yeah, yeah, but more specifically... David Hasselhoff dancing and singing atop the Berlin Wall while it fell, wearing a black leather jacket, stonewashed denim.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
I mean, that's the nature of a Faustian bargain is you don't really know in real time how bad it will get.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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 on Google Maps. And I found out where he was at. And I'm like, oh, dude, he's next to Borussia Dortmund.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And Gaspar, I'm like, they're loving life at this point too. This is 2011. They ink a deal to get Nord Stream 2 up and running.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Exactly. They get the sequel. But then comes 2014 Pablo. And that is when the story truly follows the tale of Faust.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Ukrainians overthrow their president in the Maidan revolution. Russia responds by annexing Crimea by force.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And during this hostile takeover of Crimea, a lot of Shulka fans are, they're pissed.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
This is another refrain we are familiar with in America. And so the partnership with Gazprom continues, as Tissa Lohaner from Reuters told me.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And at that time, they were incredible. They had Erin Holling. They had Christian Pulisic. Is there any chance, like, you could get me a hat? Yeah, you're that kind of cousin.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
I feel like there's a lesson here, you know, like no matter how rich you are.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Exactly. Can I get some merch? Can I get some merch? And he was just like, yeah, okay. 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...
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Then the Meat Bear makes dumbass comments about Africans that anger the fan base. Rightfully so, I would add.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
They've burned through five different managers and finished the season dead last in the league by a lot.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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 barons' factories. Of course. PR nightmare. And the meat baron, after 19 years, finally steps down.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
So again, that's Axel, who I met up with in Germany, the chairman of Schalke 04. And he was really remembering this time where it wasn't this question of, is Russia going to invade? It was this question of, when are they going to invade Ukraine?
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
So some fans already had. They actually put duct tape across the Gazprom on the jerseys so you couldn't see it, covering up that logo. But the board that they had elected continued to kind of wait.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
So they were working on it, Pablo, 24-7, talking to Gazprom's representatives, who 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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
The thing that they really needed was a new source of money.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
But 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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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. It's so bad. 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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
But then he told me, like, well, it's okay. It's just, it's been a hard time to be a Schalke fan. And I was like, what do you mean?
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
They needed to center themselves in a way and 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. And who did they end up finding? Let's go, let's go. How's it going? Good. Yeah?
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Yeah, good. 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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
So he moved back to Germany and started doing the Lord's work, man. Like, I don't know if you've seen a recent photo of Daryl Morey.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
I mean, running a losing franchise is just absolutely brutal.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
It is truly a massive amount of work.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
That's what it takes, yeah.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
But it's a different sort of pact.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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 realized that, yeah, the club's got a lot of heart, but it's time for it to get a little professional too.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
200 million to 20 million.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Yeah, yeah. And I guess his big goal is just to get the debt down to $50 million, which he says is a manageable size. And look, he's upfront with the fans. He's like, our football club, it's going to suck for a year or two. But with patience, there will be a pathway back up to the top.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
He told me about this storied team of his, Schalke 04, one of the best in all of German football, just became dead inside.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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 going to have another separate cooperative that will run Velton's Arena, which is like the Madison Square Garden.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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 going to be run completely independently of the other club as a way to generate money.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Yeah, look, man, they're not going to ever replicate the size or money or deep pockets of a state-owned natural gas company. But I guess you asked me earlier, when are the angels going to come? Who are these angels? And the simple answer is the angels are themselves. It's like Schalke is going to pick Schalke back up.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
I really want to say, you just do it with your own gumption. But I don't know, man. After the meeting with Matthias, I walked over to Velton's Arena for a match against FC Kaiserslautern, who happened to be nicknamed the Red Devils. It's a bit on the nose, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got in there, and God, it was like an absolute rock concert.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Unfortunately, we couldn't film there, so you just got to 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 going to crush.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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... That feels cosmic too, though. I know, I know. It really does. It really does.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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 d*** I was.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Wow, that's a great phrase. Yeah, welcome to the German language. 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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Absolutely. I'm like, here's this absolutely beautiful thing that was at the risk of just like not continuing. And here I am asking, hey, dude, can I get you a Borussia Dortmund? Yeah, knowing nothing about anything. Oh my God, nothing about anything. And it's just absolutely stunning.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And I didn't even tell you beforehand, they actually had a miners choir sing a sonnet beforehand just to warm everything up. There's so much to love about this community. And yeah, it was just beautiful.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
It's me signing my name to a document that made me an official member of Schalke 04. Right. So this is you becoming one of the 190,000 members. 190,001. I'm also in the process of buying a share of the co-op.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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 magnate of Gelson Kirchen.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
We fixed ourselves. And, you know, we're marching our way back up to daylight once more.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
One that 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. Right.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
We crossed out the 09 and we put an S04 across the BBD.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
In bright royal blue letters.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
It's a Swiss granola bar. God damn it.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
So at first, I had absolutely no idea. So I went to Germany to find out.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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. The Little Mermaid gets to be among... Gets to walk.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Yeah, yeah. Tenacious D gets to shred.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Yeah. Which, judging from what we heard from Max and the Blood Empty soccer team, is kind of where Schalke was. I flew the overnight to Amsterdam because it's a much cheaper flight. And then, gosh, I took a couple of different commuter rails. And then got to a little West German town called Gelsenkirchen.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
It felt like being on Amtrak and then going through the Alleghenies and then all of a sudden landing in Pittsburgh.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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 switched from coal power to natural gas.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And it's full of fans with just a ton of hope and a ton of faith.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Immediately kicks in. It's always like lottery or nothing. But then you start like walking through Gelsenkirchen. You're like, 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... I mean, this is the original cool pope, by the way. I know, the cool pope.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
He visited the area in 1987. And is also, I learned, an honorary Schalke O-Form member. So somewhere... JP2 and Cousin Max are kindred spirits. 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 afloat.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And if the ship lists, you know, you got to fix it yourself.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
They formed in 1904.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
That's the 04 in Schalke 04. And, God, they're known as one of the historic clubs in Germany. Seven-time German champions.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And the visuals here, what does this place look like? Oh, the visuals. 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. It feels like a factory.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
The other part that I liked is they're completely owned by fans, but at times it can put them in a bind.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
But at least 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 some billionaire owner's teenage sons deciding who to buy based on their Madden rating. Yes, Brooke Johnson.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
Oh, it's good. It's good. Well, dude, question.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
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 them to do like something absolutely wretched.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
That's the big question. I mean, you need massive amounts of money to compete at the highest levels of football. Yeah.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
So here begins our Faustian tale. Enter the Meat Baron, a man named Clemens Tonys, who says, quote, I am not a godfather.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
He's like, I don't like that term. There's no such thing as a godfather. Again, godfather vibes. Okay, so obviously we want to meet the godfather. 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 Tisola Hummel.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
He says that Tony has transformed from butcher to effectively running the Tyson chicken of West Germany.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Blood Empty: How a Beloved Team Made a Deal with the Devil
And he couldn't just dump his own money into it. There's rules preventing that. That meat money wasn't good. Yeah, yeah. So what he had to do is he had to catch one of these giant big fish sponsors that they could put across the crest, right across the front of their jersey. Think like Crypto.com for the Lakers.