Schalke 04 is aiming for the top of the table against Paderborn – with its best defense in professional history and goalkeeper Loris Karius, who was already thinking about ending his career.

Loris Karius has been at Schalke for less than a year, but he has already made royal blue club history. That’s because he stands in goal behind Schalke 04’s statistically best defense in professional times – with only seven goals conceded in the first 13 league games. “We defend as a unit from number nine up front to number one at the back,” explains the keeper, who has already kept seven clean sheets. He admits that this approach is “a bit risky” and that everyone has to “know their job inside out” – but: “So far, it’s always worked out well.” So well, in fact, that Karius and his teammates are aiming for the top spot in the 2nd Bundesliga in Friday’s top-of-the-table clash (6:30 p.m./Sky) against SC Paderborn.

And on top of that, better than any other Schalke team in the 63 seasons since the Bundesliga was founded. Even the legendary 1972 runners-up team, in which Norbert Nigbur stood in goal behind libero Klaus Fichtel and Reinhard Libuda, Klaus Fischer and Erwin Kremers, and which recently set the benchmark with five goals conceded in the first eleven games, has been surpassed by the current team—because back then, they suffered a 7-0 defeat at Mönchengladbach’s Bökelberg stadium in their twelfth game.

The closest to Karius and Co. 20 years ago were Frank Rost and central defenders Marcelo Bordon and Mladen Krstajic, who conceded nine goals in the same period. And at the end of the season, they set the Schalke Bundesliga record with 31 goals conceded. If you’re looking for even better goalkeepers in the club’s history, you’ll find them in 1934, when the “Schalke Kreisel” (Schalke spinning top) with club legends Ernst Kuzorra and Fritz Szepan in the Gauliga Westfalen allowed opponents such as SV Höntrop and SpVgg Herten to score only five goals in the first 13 games. Incidentally, goalkeeper Hermann Mellage was a steelworker.

More than 90 years later, his successor almost looked for a job outside of professional soccer. Karius was thinking about quitting before the second division club approached the former Champions League keeper. “If Schalke hadn’t asked, I probably would have ended my career,” the 32-year-old admitted in an interview with Sport Bild. After all, he had already tried other things while waiting for a new opportunity. “I performed as a DJ and walked the catwalk for Hugo Boss at Milan Fashion Week,” he said.

But at Schalke, Karius got back on his feet as a goalkeeper—something he had failed to do after that fateful 2018 Champions League final with Liverpool against Real Madrid, with two big mistakes (1-3) at Besiktas Istanbul, Union Berlin, and Newcastle United. At the Royal Blues, who have become promotion contenders thanks mainly to their strong defense, he is not only the undisputed number one, but also a leader off the field. He is someone who takes the pressure off before the battle for the top of the table and asks, “What do we have to lose?” Perhaps a record for the ages.