Cologne is an ideal club icon
Is Lukas Podolski really serious?
October 20, 2023, 3:06 p.m
A return to 1. FC Köln is the wish of club legend Lukas Podolski. Now he is offering himself publicly for the winter. But is that serious? Coach Steffen Baumgart doesn’t know either. The 38-year-old is currently playing for Gornik Zabrze.
Coach Steffen Baumgart from Bundesliga soccer club 1. FC Köln is apparently not entirely sure how serious the comeback offer from former world champion Lukas Podolski was. “I haven’t thought about Lukas yet. I’ll think about it now and listen to the podcast. Sometimes it’s important how something was said and in what context. Ask me again next time.”
The 38-year-old Podolski, who still plays for Gornik Zabrze in the top Polish league, had flirted with a return to FC the day before. “Just sit here. I’m ready for anything and open to all adventures,” he said in the podcast “Playmaker – The EM Talk by Sebastian Hellmann and 360Media” in response to the suggestion that his heart club doesn’t score enough goals and doesn’t have a striker in the winter needs. After seven match days, Effzeh has actually only scored four goals. The explosive Rhine derby against Borussia from Mönchengladbach is on Sunday (3:30 p.m. in the live ticker at ntv.de).
For Cologne, Podolski scored 86 goals and prepared 41 more in 181 competitive games. However, whether the 38-year-old would still be in shape to help Effzeh in the relegation battle is likely to be one of the crucial questions. The cash-strapped club is unlikely to have many options on the transfer market in the winter.
When asked whether he would like to play under Jürgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola or Steffen Baumgart in his career, he said after some time to think: “Under Baumgart at 1. FC Köln.” It is not clear how serious Podolski was. The 2014 world champion has always described a fundamental return to FC, for whom he played from 1995 to 2006 and 2009 to 2012 – in whatever role – as his wish. The people involved in the club had recently become more and more reserved.