Schalke 04 confirm over 50,000 tickets sold in few hours for friendly against Real Madrid | OneFootball

FC Schalke 04 confirmed over 50,000 tickets have been sold for their August 16th friendly against Real Madrid. The news came only a few hours after the confirmation of the fixture as the 25th year anniversary of the 62,000-seat Veltins-Arena.

"We're really looking forward to playing our final pre-season friendly against such a top-class opponent. We also know that Schalke fans can't wait to see such a blockbuster friendly at the Veltins-Arena." said Frank Baumann, Schalke's board member for sport.

Both Real Madrid and their new coach José Mourinho have fond memories of Veltins-Arena. The Spanish giants beat Schalke 6-1 away from home with braces from Karim Benzema, Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo – with the fantastic trio dubbed as BBC during that time – in their way to winning their 10th Champions League in 2013/14 season.

A decade earlier, Mourinho won his first Champions League title at Veltins-Arena with FC Porto’s 3-0 victory over Monaco in the 2003/04 final of Europe’s premier competition. The Portuguese returned to Madrid for his second spell after Los Blancos failed to win any trophy in the past two seasons.

Newly-promoted Bundesliga side Schalke will start their league season away at Augsburg, a week after facing 3. Liga side Hallescher FC in the first round of DFB-Pokal.