Schalke sign keeper Hildebrand

Schalke have signed former Sporting Lisbon goalkeeper Timo Hildebrand on a one-year deal.

The 32-year-old passed a medical on Friday and will contest for the No. 1 shirt with Lars Unnerstall and Mathias Schober after Ralf Fahrmann was ruled out for three months earlier this week with a serious knee injury.

Hildebrand, who has seven caps for Germany, was released by Sporting in the summer after failing to earn a regular spot in their starting line-up.

Hildebrand joins the 2010-11 Champions League semi-finalists on a free transfer.

The former Stuttgart man is ineligible to play in Saturday’s Bundesliga encounter against Bayer Leverkusen, but the club’s sporting director Horst Heldt regards the goalkeeper as an important signing.

“It would have been too great of a risk to have just Lars Unnerstall and Mathias Schober available for an extended period, so we decided to take this step (signing Timo Hildebrand),” Heldt told the Schalke website.

“With Timo Hildebrand, we have a goalkeeper whose sporting qualities are known. He is a good age for a goalkeeper and very success-orientated, as he showed when he won the German championship with Stuttgart in 2007.”

Hildebrand left Stuttgart soon after winning the Bundesliga title, but endured a difficult campaign with Valencia in La Liga before later representing Hoffenheim for two seasons between 2008-10.

The goalkeeper, who has been training with Eintracht Frankfurt to keep his fitness, still holds the Bundesliga record for not conceding, going 884 unbeaten minutes during the 2003-04 campaign.