Schalke striker Edin Džeko makes Bundesliga return - 5,734 days after his last appearance
Schalke’s long-awaited Bundesliga return did not quite go according to plan at Augsburg on Sunday, but the encounter at the WWK Arena was a memorable one nonetheless for veteran striker Edin Džeko.
A mere 5,734 days after his last appearance in the division, Džeko returned to German football’s top table with a 14-minute second-half cameo against Manuel Baum’s side - and in doing so, the evergreen frontman created another small piece of Bundesliga history.
Aged 40 years and 166 days, Džeko is now the eighth-oldest player ever to appear in Germany’s top flight. Only three outfield players - Klaus Fichtel, Claudio Pizarro and Mirko Votava - sit above the Bosnia and Herzegovina striker in the rankings.
Meanwhile, the gap between Džeko’s final Bundesliga outing for Wolfsburg in 2010/11, and his first for Schalke in 2026/27, is a remarkable 15 years and 255 days.
That figure is surpassed only by former Waldhof Mannheim and Karlsruhe player Wolfgang Böhni, who appeared for Mannheim 16 years and 245 days after his final run-out for the KSC.
Džeko was unable to mark his Bundesliga return with a consolation effort at the WWK Arena, but a goal in the next two months would make him the second-oldest player - after Pizarro - to find the net in Bundesliga history.
Any effort after that would give him the record outright.
Watch: 'I still have the passion' - Džeko
Oldest players in Bundesliga history:
- Klaus Fichtel: 43 years, 184 days
- Uli Stein: 42 years, 170 days
- Toni Schumacher: 42 years, 73 days
- Claudio Pizarro: 41 years, 268 days
- Mirko Votava: 40 years, 225 days
- Bernd Dreher: 40 years, 198 days
- Jens Lehmann: 40 years, 179 days
- Edin Džeko: 40 years, 166 days
- Manuel Neuer: 40 years, 154 days
- Manfred Burgsmüller: 40 years, 141 days
Longest gap between two Bundesliga appearances:
- Wolfgang Böhni: 16 years, 245 days
- Edin Džeko: 15 years, 255 days
- Michael Langer: 13 years, 271 days
- Robert Nikolic: 13 years, 62 days
- Bernd Schuster: 12 years, 335 days
- Rudolf Müller: 12 years, 328 days
- Philipp Tschauner: 11 years, 301 days
- Daniel Batz: 11 years, 212 days
- Stephan Täuber: 11 years, 59 days
- Sami Khedira: 10 years, 273 days
