Announcement for professionals from 1. FC Köln
“Hold your beak and squeeze your ass cheeks”
November 20, 2025 – 6:33 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
1. FC Köln goes into the last five Bundesliga games of the year with a clear announcement from Lukas Kwasniok. What the coach demands now.
Ninth place after ten match days and as a promoted team 1. FC Cologne is still one of the surprise teams of this Bundesliga season. In this role, Lukas Kwasniok would like to say goodbye to the short Christmas break in just over a month. On Thursday, when the team gathered together at the Geißbockheim for the first time after the last international match period of the year, the coach swore his players in clear words about the year-end spurt.
“I gave the boys one thing today,” revealed Kwasniok at the press conference before the home game against Eintracht Frankfurt: “It’s now a matter of keeping your mouth shut and squeezing your ass cheeks for the next four weeks, putting personal sensitivities aside.”
After four and a half months under Kwasniok’s management, not every player is likely to be satisfied with his role. Linton Maina, for example, had extended his contract to play at FC in the Bundesliga to be counted among the regular staff. Jusuf Gazibegovic, on the other hand, was a Champions League participant in January Storm Graz moved to the Geißbockheim and currently plays no role at all.
Before the remaining five Bundesliga duels, Kwasniok was apparently keen to sharpen his team’s senses once again. The motto: Every player must put the team’s success above their own situation. “Whatever they do,” the 44-year-old praised the attitude of his professionals.
In the four games before the international break, FC had scored four points – despite mostly decent performances, not quite what Kwasniok wanted. His goal: “What made us very successful in the first games, which brought us six points in the first two games of the season, is now also the credo and the objective for the five games until the winter break.”
With unity, high intensity and match plans in which every single player participates, the billy goats want to maintain or even increase their comforting cushion on the bottom of the table.
Afterwards, during the winter break, comes the time to devote ourselves to the individual fates. Kwasniok announced: “We sit down with everyone, do an analysis with each individual and then say: Okay, that was good from our point of view, that was good from the player’s point of view.”
And of course what wasn’t good should also be discussed. Undoubtedly, one or two requests for a change will arise. But only when the ball rests in the Bundesliga. “At the moment,” Kwasniok emphasized again, “the only thing that matters is to get the best possible for this club.”