Top scorer before leaving Cologne
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With eight goals and four assists, Tim Lemperle is one of the best scorers in the 2nd Bundesliga. Because his contract with 1. FC Köln expires at the end of the season, the 22-year-old striker is in high demand. TSG Hoffenheim currently seems to have the best chance of signing on a free transfer, and VfB Stuttgart is also said to be interested. In the poker around Lemperle, his advisor has now spoken out and dealt against the club.
“We don’t have an offer from FC,” Dušan Jevtic from the ROGON agency told Sport Bild. The consultant was reacting to statements made by trainer Gerhard Struber. “Team Lemperle will know what playing time he gets here. I hope he doesn’t take the first offer that comes his way. I am sure that he still has a very successful path ahead of him at 1. FC Köln. I hope that he is well advised to take the next right steps. Because he also only has one career.”
However, Jevtic’s criticism did not affect the coach, with whom Lemperle has a good relationship. “The coach may not even know that there were no concrete negotiations,” said the agent. Rather, he addressed sports director Christian Keller, with whom he last spoke about his protégé on July 1st, but not about a possible extension.
The report states that a meeting had actually been planned for December 5th, which the cathedral townspeople confirmed to the consultant and informed him that Keller and licensing department manager Thomas Kessler would be there. But according to the advisor, Keller did not appear because he had a long-known appointment with the DFL in Frankfurt. “When I heard about it, I left,” Jevtic said. “The conversation with Thomas Kessler had been pleasant up to that point. But if whoever decides in the end doesn’t seem to want to talk about Tim’s future, 1. FC Köln’s interest in an extension can’t be particularly great.”
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This has now been ruled out by the behavior of the bosses. Lemperle only communicates with the coach; he did not respond to Keller’s personal contact in the last week. The attacker moved to Cologne’s youth team in 2017 and made his professional debut in June 2020. Since then he has appeared on the pitch 49 times for the Billy Goats. Now he is about to say goodbye, from January 1st he can officially negotiate with other clubs and sign with a new club without having to take his current employer into account. With a market value of 3 million euros, he is the second most valuable second division professional with an expiring contract.