Manuel Neuer in goal, Mesut Özil pulling the strings alongside Leroy Sane and Julian Draxler with Benedikt Höwedes holding things together at the back — Schalke's youth academy all-time five-a-side team would take some beating.

The Royal Blues have always given youth a chance, and when Levent Mercan came off the bench to replace Amine Harit against Borussia Mönchengladbach on Matchday 1 this season, he became Schalke's 100th teenage Bundesliga debutant.

bundesliga.com picks out five of the very best rough diamonds the Gelsenkirchen talent factory has polished up into the finished, top-of-the-range product.

1) Manuel Neuer
Bundesliga record for Schalke: 154 (62 clean sheets)

"He was a totally normal pupil, you wouldn't have picked him out as a future professional in the class," said Neuer's schoolteacher. The Germany captain's persona fits snugly with that of his unassuming home town, Gelsenkirchen, where he grew up within a goalkick of the site of the Veltins Arena. He may not have stood out from the others in his school, but his football talent was already in a class of its own.

Watch: Manuel Neuer's roots

Neuer became a Schalke member in 1991, shortly before his fifth birthday, and 14 years later signed a professional contract with the Royal Blues as the first-team squad's third-choice goalkeeper. Come 19 August, 2006, he was making his Bundesliga debut in Aachen in place of the injured Frank Rost.

By January, Rost was on his way out of the club as coach Mirko Slomka had found a new number one in the 20-year-old Neuer, who was suddenly at the head of a youthful goalkeeping trio that included the teenage Ralf Fährmann.

"Of course we'll have to consider in the summer whether we bring in an experienced goalkeeper," said Schalke's sporting director Andreas Müller at the time. They never did.

2) Mesut Özil
Bundesliga record for Schalke: 30 games (0 goals)

"Mesut wanted to play football, the rest didn't interest him," said Jochen Herrmann, Özil's sports teacher, who must have had an easier job getting his young pupil to focus than most of his colleagues. "We wanted to have fun with the ball. I was always under the impression that he would go to sleep with a football in his bed."

"I've always been a Schalke fan," said Özil, sporting an impressive mullet haircut in his very first Schalke interview, but he had initially been ignored by his hometown club and spent five years at Rot-Weiss Essen until — in 2005 — he first pulled on the fabled blue shirt.

Mesut Özil made his Bundesliga debut at Schalke before joining Werder Bremen. - Christof Koepsel/Bongarts/Getty Images

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The Category A German youth title came at the end of his first season — beating Bayern Munich in the final — and he took the step up to the first team that summer, making his Bundesliga bow against Eintracht Frankfurt in August 2006 at the age of 17.

"I can learn a lot from Lincoln," said Özil, who would vie with the Brazilian for the side's number 10 role as he made 19 top-flight appearances in his maiden campaign to help Schalke finish Bundesliga runners-up.

The love affair should have lasted longer though, ending abruptly in January 2008 with an eleventh-hour winter transfer window move to Werder Bremen. "We have decided not to extend Mesut's contract," said Müller, who had held heated talks with Özil's father. "We think Mesut is a fabulous talent, but we've made our decision."

3) Leroy Sane
Bundesliga record for Schalke: 47 games (11 goals)

Bayer Leverkusen fans are used to asking 'What might have been?' Sane is another source of serious regret. He had already spent three years at the Schalke youth academy when he switched to Leverkusen in 2008. He even won the western German title with Die Werkself's youth side in 2010, but switched back to Schalke three years later, and it was most certainly Leverkusen's loss.

"One day, Schalke approached my dad. My parents asked me if I would like [to go to Schalke]. I wanted to," explained Sane, who had initially joined the the Royal Blues aged just eight after taking his first footballing steps at hometown club Wattenscheid where his father had played Bundesliga football in the 1990s

"We had often played against Schalke with Wattenscheid. It was clear to me that it's a special club."

Watch: Prepare to be dazzled by Leroy Sane's top 5 Bundesliga goals

Schalke knew they had a special talent, and he became a central figure in the U19 side put together under the club's legendary youth coach Norbert Elgert in the 2013/14 campaign before he got a first-team call from coach Jens Keller in March 2014 along with current Augsburg man Philipp Max.

Max would have to leave the club to find regular top-flight football,  but Sane was soon in the thick of the first-team action, making his Bundesliga debut in April 2014 at 18. He played — and scored — in the UEFA Champions League tie with Real Madrid the following season, but still helped the U19 team claim the national title in the same campaign.

4) Julian Draxler
Bundesliga record for Schalke: 119 games (18 goals)

"A mega-cool feeling," was how Draxler described winning the DFB Cup in 2011. "A year or two ago, I was watching on TV as the players lifted the cup. Now I have it in my hands." It was no surprise Draxler showed boyish wonder after scoring the opening goal in the 5-0 rout of MSV Duisburg at Berlin's Olympiastadion: he was just 17.

Barely old enough to drink a celebratory beer with his teammates in the dressing room, the teenage prodigy had just written himself into German football's history books by becoming the youngest-ever winner of the competition.

He'd already claimed a unique place in Schalke's annals by making his first-team debut in January of the same year, replacing Ivan Rakitic against Hamburg when he was just 17 years, 117 days old. No younger player had ever represented the Royal Blues.

Watch: Julian Draxler: Made in the Bundesliga

By early March 2013, he was already playing his 100th competitive game for the club, and on 3 May, 2014, he was breaking new ground again: at the age of 20 years, seven months and 13 days, Draxler played his 100th Bundesliga game, beating the record previously owned by Charly Körbel as the German top-flight's youngest centurion.

"He's very focused, and not reckless or rash. Everything he does has sense," said Felix Magath, the man who handed Draxler his Bundesliga debut and not a coach easily impressed. "You see in every phase of the game that he wants to score. That makes him a difficult opponent for everyone."

5) Benedikt Höwedes
Bundesliga record for Schalke: 240 games (12 goals)

Some players are born leaders: Höwedes is one of them. Schalke recognised that too, immediately handing Höwedes the captain's armband of their U19 side when he joined them in 2005. He led the team that claimed the A category German title the next year before signing his first professional contract in January 2007.

His first-team debut did not come until the following October, however, as the then-19-year-old was thrown in at the deep end in the Champions League, another sign of just how much faith Schalke had in him and their youth academy. A Bundesliga bow came three days later, the first of over 200 German top-flight appearances for the Royal Blues, the majority of which were with the armband on.

Benedikt Höwedes captained Schalke from youth to first-team level. - Lukas Schulze/Bundesliga/DFL via Getty Images

A player who always gave his all, Höwedes' commitment to the cause made him a Schalke icon. He also became — along with Draxler — one of the club's FIFA World Cup winners in Brazil in 2014, and was singled out for praise by a living legend of the game, Der Kaiser himself.

"Benedikt Höwedes is the one who impressed me most," said Franz Beckenbauer, who acknowledged the Schalke centre-back had adapted seamlessly to playing right-back for his country. "He played in a completely different position and performed brilliantly. He did it with flying colours."

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