Saturday, February 06, 2021
Derby of opposites
At 1. FC Köln you are “crazy and crazy”
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On the Rhine, floods these days are causing real concerns in places. In terms of sport, the water is only symbolically up to the neck of 1. FC Köln, the location around the Geißbockheim doesn’t make it any more comfortable. Before the important derby against a carefree Gladbach, the coach is pissed off.
Taking a short breath more than once is not an option for 1. FC Köln and Markus Gisdol this season. And just in time for the derby at Borussia Mönchengladbach, the water is of course up to your neck again, and the trend is rising rapidly. “These wave movements,” says coach Gisdol, “make me mad and crazy.” Because the billy goats drag themselves beaten into the so important game in the evening (6.30 p.m. / Sky), only three days after the embarrassing cup-out at the second division Regensburg.
“It would have been so easy,” mused Gisdol, “to take one more sense of achievement” to the derby. Instead, FC are now going to Gladbach “with a negative feeling”. And with just one point ahead of the relegation zone. The ups and downs in Cologne may still be quite new for Gisdol, but around the cathedral it has long been a painful habit. And year after year, the Rhenish duels in particular work like salt in this wound, because opposites collide.
On the one hand there is a constant struggle for existence, the FC lives from hand to mouth, both sportily and financially. This is always garnished with one or the other embarrassment away from the square – in the end a media director who had not even started his job had to leave again amid a loud roar. For various reasons he was not available to the fans.
A derby as a turning point
Only 50 kilometers further north, on the other hand, is a haven of happiness: Champions League, millions in income, good work all the time. This is also very current, Borussia has been unbeaten since the turn of the year. And it seems almost overwhelming for the FC. This is particularly painful for the Cologne team because in the recent past they have been able to watch their rivals grow. It wasn’t until almost exactly ten years ago that the clubs parted ways.
Until then, both of them had lived for a while between the first and second division, and the derby on April 10, 2011 was the turning point. The then new coach Lucien Favre helped the then 18-year-old goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen to make his professional debut, Gladbach finished the FC with 5: 1, later managed to stay up through relegation. In the following season Cologne was relegated, Borussia stormed into the Champions League – and so it went on.
Quite a few coaches in Cologne have since tried to stop the wave movements, only Peter Stöger managed it at times. Markus Gisdol also seems more and more perplexed in the face of setbacks – and therefore tries a mantra that has already been heard in Cologne. “In the derby,” he says, “we have a great opportunity to make up for something.” If this doesn’t succeed, the water rises.
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