While the second team was still playing in the B class when Heidel started as manager, they rose to the 3rd division in the 2013/14 season after promotion for the seventh time.

Under Thomas Tuchel, who later became head coach, the U-19s won the German A-Junior Championship in 2009 after beating Borussia Dortmund 2–1 in the final.

Liga in 2014,[8] the highest tier of the German football league system reserve teams are allowed to compete in.

[14] Heidel installed Markus Weinzierl as the club's head coach,[15] but sacked him the year after,[16] as Schalke's tenth-place finish was insufficient to qualify them for any international competition.

[20] Heidel himself had already handed in his resignation weeks earlier, assuming full responsibility for the team's decline.

The club announced the dismissal of coach Jan-Moritz Lichte and the hiring of Martin Schmidt as sporting director on the same day, in a bid to avoid relegation.

[25][26] This was ultimately successful, as the team won nine of their seventeen games during the second half of the season and came in at a safe rank twelve.

In 1989 he bought a 20 percent stake in a BMW car dealership in Mainz, becoming its commercial director and limited partner.