Coach crack at 1. FC Cologne? Helmes reacts
Mar 22, 2026 8:33 am | 2:15m
Coach Lukas Kwasniok has to worry about his job at 1. FC Köln after the 3-3 draw in the derby against Borussia Mönchengladbach. RTL expert Patrick Helmes assesses the situation with the Bundesliga club, which is threatened with relegation.
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Of course it will be tight. There was once talk of an ultimatum that he had to get the so-called four points from the three games. That didn’t work. He got four two. You have to say we didn’t win again, but we didn’t play badly either. But the problem is simple: you have the international break, you then have Frankfurt, you have Bremen, you have St.Pauli. Really difficult tasks. And now Thomas Kessler has to join the team. Does he trust Lukas to do that for these games, which are really brutally important for the club? To get the team on point to win the games. Or whether he says 18 games, two wins is not enough. And then, as always, Friedhelm Funkel will probably turn on the engine.
Yes, Friedhelm is no longer a firefighter at all, but is really just a part-time worker who comes at the end when the coal really needs to be taken out of the fire. And he already showed that impressively in Cologne. And I always believe that when there is a situation like this, whether it is in Wolfsburg or now in Cologne, you have to think about Friedhelm Funkel because he simply has this, this calm, to exude this security so that a team can reflect on its own strengths again. And that’s why Funkel is definitely the right man. And I also believe that he would definitely be very interested in the task again. But Thomas Kessler has a difficult night ahead of him to decide whether the path with Lukas Kwasniak comes to an end.
Jael Malla has of course had an above-average year so far. Sure, you have to say that in 2026 it will no longer be in the same form that it was in 2025. But that’s normal at a young age. Comes from Viktoria Köln from the third division. It is impossible to make this leap permanently. He was with the national team at the end of the year. I think it was okay not to nominate him because the form wasn’t particularly good either. But the fact is that he also scored his tenth goal. And Leroy Sane, as an example, is not an absolute regular player in Turkey. And the quality is not what everyone hoped for. So that would have been a possibility. But I believe that if Elmala gets going again and maybe can build on the first half of the season and score. Furthermore, the train may not have left yet.
