Kim Min-jae vs Hwang Hee-chan: The Korean Derby That Wasn't
Bayern Munich and Schalke 04 walked out at the Veltins-Arena on September 5 with a Korean international on each team sheet for the first time in either club's history. By full time, neither one had played a single competitive minute. Kim Min-jae spent the whole match on Bayern's bench. Hwang Hee-chan wasn't even named among Schalke's substitutes — four days after signing for the club.
If you cleared your evening for a Kim-versus-Hwang duel, you got a scoreless draw and two players in tracksuits instead.
Why Kim Min-jae Was Left Out
Kim's been a fixture at Bayern since the club paid Napoli's full €50 million release clause for him in July 2023, days after he'd been voted Serie A's best defender on the back of Napoli's first Scudetto in three decades. Manchester United wanted him too; Bayern moved faster and signed him to a five-year deal. Three years in, he's still the guy Bayern reach for when either Jonathan Tah or Dayot Upamecano needs a rest. That's exactly what didn't happen here.
Kim had started every one of Bayern's competitive matches so far this season — the 5-1 opening-day rout of Stuttgart on August 28 and a DFB-Pokal win over Osnabrück. Against Schalke, Vincent Kompany went with Jonathan Tah and Dayot Upamecano at center-back instead, and Kim never left the bench — the first time this season he's been an unused substitute, according to both SBS and the Korea Herald.
That's squad rotation, not a demotion — Tah, Upamecano, and Kim have functioned as a three-man center-back pool under Kompany before, and one game on the bench two weeks into a season means little on its own. But it's exactly the kind of detail that turns "will these two finally share a pitch" into "not this time," and Korean football media treated it as the story of the night.
A Deadline-Day Escape From the Championship
Hwang's absence has a longer story behind it. Wolverhampton Wanderers were relegated from the Premier League at the end of last season — confirmed on April 20 after a historically bad start that left them with just 17 points from 33 games. Hwang spent five years at Wolves, playing 119 times and scoring 22 goals — his best season came in 2023/24 under Gary O'Neil, with 13 goals. None of that mattered to new Championship-level head coach Cesar Peixoto, who hadn't used Hwang at all this season.
Wolves' own technical director, Matt Jackson, didn't dress it up: "It was a really late shout for Hee Chan before the German transfer window closed, but he's going back to an environment that he's very comfortable in and he's just got to play games." He added, plainly, "He's expressed his frustrations, rightly, because the best players want to play all of the time."
So on September 1, four days before the Bayern match, Schalke signed Hwang on a season-long loan through June 2027 with a €3 million buy option. Schalke's sporting director Youri Mulder framed the move in Bundesliga's own announcement: "In Hwang Hee-chan, we've bolstered our attacking options. He can play in multiple positions, and we see his many years of experience in a variety of leagues and on the international stage as a big plus." Hwang's own line was simpler: "Schalke impressed me last season. I've been studying their style of play closely and think that I'd be a good fit for the team." Four days later, in his new club's first match with him on the books, he didn't even make the bench.
What Happened on the Pitch
The match itself belonged to Schalke's goalkeeper, not to either Korean bench. Loris Karius took 68% of the fan vote for man of the match in front of 62,094 fans, holding off a Bayern side that racked up 83% possession and 5 shots on target to Schalke's zero without ever beating him. Bayern's own expected-goals number, 2.1, tells the same story: enough quality chances to win comfortably, and nothing to show for it.
Kompany didn't dodge the result afterward. "Every game has its own story. Today, unfortunately, the story was that we couldn't score," he said, before crediting the opponent directly: "Congratulations to Schalke, they fought really hard for the point. We had our moments and created big chances. When you play against such a compact and aggressive team, then you have to take your chances." He also pointed to a tempo problem rather than a talent gap in comments to Get Football News Germany: "You need 90 minutes of pressure against defenses like this until they crack. We only managed it for 60 or 70 minutes."
For newly promoted Schalke, a scoreless draw against the reigning champions was worth celebrating like a win, and by most accounts in the German press, that's exactly how the players treated it. Context matters here: this was Schalke's first Bundesliga match in three years after grinding through three straight seasons in the second-tier 2. Bundesliga. One of German football's biggest historic names holding the champions scoreless in its top-flight return is a genuinely good story on its own, Korean subplot or not.
Where International Fans Can Watch the Rematch
Here's the part worth bookmarking if you want to catch Kim or Hwang whenever they do share a pitch. Kickoff for this match was 18:30 CEST in Germany — that's 12:30 p.m. US Eastern and, conveniently, 17:30 BST in the UK, which lines up exactly with Sky Sports' exclusive Saturday "top match" slot for the 2026/27 season. In Korea, that's 1:30 a.m. — a genuinely rough one to stay up for, which is probably why most of the Korean coverage of this game ran the next morning.
If you're in the US, this season is the one to adjust your habits for: Bundesliga dropped ESPN+ after six years and moved to Versant, splitting coverage between USA Network (at least 30 games) and Fandango, which streams the other 275-plus matches free with ads. No subscription wall this time, which is a genuine improvement if you've been paying for ESPN+ just to watch Bayern.
There isn't a confirmed date yet for the reverse fixture at the Allianz Arena — it'll land later in the season once the full run of fixtures plays out. My guess: Kim's back in the XI well before then, rotation or not, and Hwang needs a few Bundesliga starts under his belt before Schalke risk throwing him into a game against the league's best defense. Realistically, the version of this fixture worth circling is the second one, once Hwang has actually played himself into form and Kim isn't rotating out of a game against a promoted side. The derby will happen eventually. It just wasn't going to be this one — and if you stayed up for it in Korea, you're owed a better reason next time.
This is a running news series, not a one-off post — new stories go up twice a day, roughly 7am and 7pm Korea time.
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