Miron Muslic did not even have to wait for his first game in front of 62,000 supporters to appreciate the scale of what he had taken on as Schalke’s new head coach. That became clear when 3,000 fans turned up to watch the first training session this summer.
"That makes this club not only big, it makes it special," he tells Sky Sports on a visit to the club's magnificent stadium. "Schalke is still a giant." He went easy on the players in that first session but the ride was just beginning. "Fasten your seatbelts," he told them.
Plymouth Argyle were frustrated when Muslic left them in the summer. He had arrived last January with the club bottom of the Championship. They ranked among the top half for points during his time in charge but it was not quite enough. "We ran out of games."
He was preparing for a season in League One when Schalke came calling. It was, he admits, an emotional decision. Schalke are in the second tier but they are the world's sixth biggest club in terms of membership with the third highest attendances in Germany.
"Every single home game with 62,000 people here," he says, looking out onto the pitch. "I thought of it as the most beautiful challenge in professional football. I saw the potential." But the rational part of his brain realised that he is not the first incoming coach to think this.
"Leave your emotions aside for one and a half seconds, look closely, and then you can see how big this challenge is. Then, you just see a graveyard for coaches, burning through them like nothing." Schalke have changed their coach during each of the last five seasons.
"I realised that this club was is in a very difficult situation, coming out of a very fragile season, I think the worst season in the history of Schalke, conceding over 120 goals in the last two years. You do see all the obstacles. But I still see opportunity too.
"From day one, we tried to hide the past and focus on the potential. The club is full of ambitions but the first step was to stabilise the club. Everything was fragile. It is easy to break something. It is super difficult to collect the pieces and try to make it again."
Midway through his first season, Schalke are at the top of the table and Muslic, whisper it, is closer to promotion than the sack. He has ridden the emotions. "Here, without emotion, you are done anyway." And he has handled the pressure. "That is omnipresent."
How has he done it? Muslic is as animated talking tactics as he is demonstrative when speaking about the importance of human connection. But it all starts with that buy in. At Plymouth, his speeches went viral. Here too, he got the players on board early.
"I can use words rhetorically and I have several languages, which is an advantage for a coach in the locker room, but it was never about speeches. You cannot win matches with just words. But it is about making connections quickly, creating a new mindset."
Much of what Muslic preaches goes against the grain of modern thinking among coaches but that makes him all the more fascinating. Marginal gains? "I understand Pep Guardiola and Arne Slot talking about that. I focus on the big gains - the 90 per cent!"
Tactically, he repeats the phrase "aggressive, intense and brave" often, a mantra for what he wants his team to be. He once called Jurgen Klopp's Borussia Dortmund an inspiration but he has stopped saying that now. "You cannot mention that word here!"
But where he differs from some of the game's most celebrated coaches is that when Muslic talks of his vision for the team he is envisaging them without the ball when he says it. Schalke are top of the table for points but bottom of the table for possession.
'We do not want possession'
"Rock bottom," he says, laughing. "But we have no possession because we do not want possession. We define our game completely differently. They can play all night long 65 metres from our goal. But as soon as they enter a certain zone, we are on them."
For Muslic, this is brave football. "Because we are defending in the opponent's half. I want my team consistently proactive, not waiting but chasing, forcing opponents into mistakes. We call them pressing traps. That is what our game is based on," he explains.
"People ask me how I can call it domination when we never have the ball. We have the highest defensive line in the second Bundesliga. That is brave, that is aggressive. We do not park the bus but we do have the best defensive structure in Germany." He is right.
Schalke conceded only 10 goals in the first half of the season, the best defensive record in the top two divisions with even Bayern Munich conceding more. The bottom club are outscoring Schalke so that needs to improve but, yes, he started with the biggest gains.
"You do not need to be a rocket scientist to know that if you concede three goals a game even Bayern Munich would struggle." At this point, Muslic rises from his chair, demonstrating the aggression that he demands. "Defend the box! Protect the red zone!"
It is easy to appreciate how Muslic is able to inspire players to extraordinary feats such as Plymouth's shock win over Liverpool in the FA Cup last season. But it is not all motivation, there is method to it and a detail to his coaching that explains his success.
"We coach these principles every day but we hide them in our passing drills, our little games. They are everywhere but nowhere," he says. "Players have 55,000 solutions in their heads. They only need two or three. It might seem old school but keep it simple."
'Slavery is also geopolitics'
When Muslic talks this way, with such passion for the game, it is tempting to see him as just another football obsessive. But this would be to ignore his other interests and the fact that this is a man who was a Bosnian refugee as a child. He sees the bigger picture.
He feels the weight of that even now. "First of all, I am representing myself and I am now representing Schalke. But I am aware of my responsibility in representing Bosnia. We are just a small country so I am aware of the impact of a Bosnian coaching this club."
Muslic talks with just as much enthusiasm when discussing what he is reading. It is not a book about football but nor is Roots by Alex Haley quite about escapism either. "It is about slavery in America but slavery is also geopolitics, I think. It is a fantastic book."
'Football is a vampire'
He is at the training ground for 7.30am each day - "demanding everything of myself so I can demand everything back" - but other interests include a love of nature. "I do my walks every day." And he is a movie buff too. "Al Pacino and Roberto De Niro," he says.
"If you do not have other interests you will go crazy, you will lose yourself. Especially at a club like Schalke, this club is too big not to find the time to shut off. Most coaches are losing themselves now with the pressure. You have to take time for you.
"Energy is a big part of football so you have to recharge but it is an energy drainer too. Football is like a vampire, you know. Like a mosquito. You need to get rid of it sometimes, recharge. The next day, you might get me again but I will always bite back."
'Pressure is a privilege'
He will need that resilience at Schalke. This is a club that was playing in the knockout stages of the Champions League in 2019 but managed to be relegated in 2021 and again in 2023. In Gelsenkirchen, the next disappointment is often around the corner.
But Muslic is ready. "It is super important to have that energy because it is difficult out there," again gesticulating towards the vast Veltins Arena. "My assistant Eddie Lattimore, an English guy from Peterborough, he always says to me that it is dog eat dog."
He adds: "They will eat you up for breakfast if you do not have this energy. You cannot survive here without it but it is a privilege to be coach of this club and that pressure that comes with it is a privilege." Muslic's Schalke are going on a ride. Fasten your seatbelts.