The top seed in UEFA Cup Group A, FC Schalke 04, will represent formidable opposition in their Veltins-Arena home when City visit Gelsenkirchen in late November.

Despite their early beginnings in May 1904 when the ‘Sportclub Westfalia 1904 Schalke’  was founded by a group of 14 and 15-year-old boys it took another 20 years before the German side we know now as Schalke 04 came into being.

In 1912 the Westfalia side merged with a gymnastics club called Turnverein 1877 Schalke due to the latter’s membership of the West German Football Association. and 12 years on the gymnasts and the footballers went their separate ways. At the general meeting in January 1924 the football section adopted the name ‘FC Schalke 04’ and agreed to change the club colours from red and yellow to blue and white in the process.

Between 1933 and 1943 Schalke rose to prominence and won the German championship six times before adding their seventh – and to date final – league title in 1958.

When the Bundesliga came into being in 1963 Schalke were among the 16 founder members, but in the first 10 years they largely struggled against relegation. Indeed, in the 1964/65 season the Royal Blues would have gone down had the German Football Association not increased the size of the league to 18 teams.

At the end of the decade though a new, promising young team was built around one of the club’s most famous players, right-winger Reinhard Libuda, who was known to everyone simply as "Stan" after Stanley Matthews because of his dribbling ability.

But Stan and Co couldn’t stop City when the two teams met in the 1970 European Cup Winners’ Cup semi final. A 1-0 win for the German side in the first leg was swiftly reversed at Maine Road and a 5-1 win on the night gave the Blues a 5-2 aggregate win on their way to beating Gornik Zabrze 2-1 in the final.

Schalke's involvement in a match-fixing scandal in 1971 and the resulting suspension of several leading players saw the team eventually break apart, which led to the decline of Schalke over a number of years, as the 80s saw Die Knappen (The Miners) yo-yo between leagues.

Eventually in 1991 the club returned to the top flight and it has stayed there ever since with its finest moment over recent times coming in 1997 as coach Huub Stevens' team, known as the 'Eurofighters,' beat Inter Milan on penalties at the San Siro to lift the UEFA Cup.

A year later work started on the Veltins-Arena and in 2001 Schalke moved in to the state of the art stadium which holds almost 54,000 for European games and almost 62,000 for domestic fixtures. It has a pitch that can be slid outside the stadium, a retractable roof, a movable South Stand and a video cube scoreboard. The stadium does have one downside though as it was the scene of England's 2006 World Cup exit on penalties at the hands of Portugal.

Moving forward to this season, Schalke are currently fifth in the Bundesliga after seven games and find themselves in the UEFA Cup having failed to make it through to the Champions League group stages. A promising 1-0 home win against Atletico Madrid in the Third Qualifying Round first leg was washed away in the second leg in Spain as Madrid swept Schalke aside 4-0.

Progression to the UEFA Cup group stages was made easier after a 4-1 away win in the first leg against Apoel FC before a tame 1-1 draw in Gelsenkirchen secured a 5-2 aggregate victory.

Prominent players to look out for will be strikers Kevin Kuranyi and Jefferson Farfán, Croatian midfielder Ivan Rakitić and Brazilian defender Rafinha.

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