“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Köln, and it is not being withdrawn.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.91 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Sebastian Sebulonsen wants continental football; whether Köln can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Köln this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Dec 2029
Ellyes Skhiri falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Ryan Kent. 1‑0 against Union Berlin, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Successful dribbles: 33. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Two goals and a mark of 8.26 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Köln hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Ísak Jóhannesson and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Köln and Hamburger SV in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ellyes Skhiri is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Union Berlin will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Fabian Frei has pre-agreed a move to Köln, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Köln will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Almugera Kabar is living that version at Köln, and it tends to show in the first month.
Köln have gone to Heidenheim with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mokéssé Bamba is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Tom Krauß and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
TSG Hoffenheim wanted more than $130.0K and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Köln will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The shirt still fits. Fabián Balbuena is back at Köln, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ellyes Skhiri was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
“I watch every Köln game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at VfB Stuttgart runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Köln, and both men came out saying it was fine.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.07 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Day 39 of the vacancy. Candidates have been priced, sounded out and quietly ruled out — and the caretaker’s win ratio is becoming an argument all by itself.
Tom Krauß was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad9 Apr 2029
Ellyes Skhiri falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Ryan Kent. 3‑1 against Heidenheim, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marked 8.13 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Köln know it.
The end came on a Tuesday, as these things usually do: a short meeting, a shorter statement, and the manager clearing his office by noon. Football’s cruellest ritual, performed to schedule.
There is nobody left to promote and nobody left to run a session. The board have brought in a name the supporters do not know, and the question of how a club gets here will outlast whoever answers it.
The whole football department in one room on a weekday morning. Nothing was announced afterwards, which is what a board announces when it has run out of patience.
“Somebody has to pick the team on Saturday, and this week that is me.” An interim appointment with no promises attached, which is how most of them start.
Every paper's favourite story and every manager's least. What happened is being dealt with internally, which is the phrase clubs use when they would rather nobody asked again.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Marius Bülter and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Tom Krauß was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ísak Jóhannesson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Alessio Castro-Montes will call it something else in private.
The dugout12 Feb 2029
the manager answers for it
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad12 Feb 2029
6 new faces, and Köln are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Alessio Castro-Montes is living that version at Köln, and it tends to show in the first month.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Köln people have started saying his name in the past tense.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Marius Bülter was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ryan Kent is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.