Cologne / Bergisch Gladbach (dpa / lnw) – CDU veteran and football fan Wolfgang Bosbach (69) is expecting a difficult season for his heart club 1. FC Köln. “I know how it was the last time we played Europe,” said the former chairman of the Bundestag’s interior committee of the German Press Agency. He likes the way the team plays – football is no longer “managed”.
At the same time, he is also very concerned that FC’s past season will raise unreasonable expectations. “In Cologne we always waver between fear of relegation and the Champions League,” said Bosbach, who has been loyal to FC for decades and still saw Hans Schäfer, world champion from 1954, play.
The Cologne team finished the past Bundesliga season in seventh place and thus secured qualification for the Conference League playoffs – so the city is expecting international football again. When the club qualified for the European Cup in 2017, however, it was relegated from the Bundesliga about a year later.
For Bosbach, it now also depends on who the club will meet in the Conference League. “There are clubs there that I’ve never heard of,” he said. But there are also attractive teams in the raffle.
