What creates Arsenal’s opponents Köln special?
Founded: 1948
Nickname: Die Geißböcke (The Goats)
UEFA bar foe honours
• none
Domestic honours (most new pretension in brackets)
League titles: 3 (1978)
Domestic cup: 4 (1983)
• They are really most looking brazen to confronting Arsenal. Goalkeeper Timo Horn said: “For us players, entrance adult opposite Arsenal in a rival tie is a biggest opportunity.” Fans agree: there were 20,000 applications for a 2,000 divided seats allocated during Arsenal Stadium for Thursday’s game, yet it is satisfactory to contend that Köln supporters are vehement about all their trips this season – 13,000 have apparently shown seductiveness in travelling to Serbia for their matchday 6 diversion during Crvena zvezda.
• European football has turn something of an mania in Cologne. Having done their entrance in a 1962/63 European Cup, Köln frequently seemed in UEFA competitions until a route went cold in 1997, when they reached a UEFA Intertoto Cup semi-finals. Since then, each decent run of formula stirred widespread predictions of an approaching lapse to Europe – that all valid to be wrong until a fifth-place finish final deteriorate finally brought them behind after a 20-year absence.
• The face of Köln might be Hennes a goat, who attends all home games. Named in honour of a club’s one-time star midfielder and manager Hennes Weisweiler (who coached Barcelona in a 1970s), a strange Hennes was a 1950 present from a internal playground owner. Hennes VIII has been a club’s go-to goat given 2008.
• Köln have a clarity of fun. The city of perfume is famous for a internal carnival, and a bar take an active partial in a festivities, starting with fancy-dress training on 11 Nov – a day that a fair (which takes place in a weeks before Ash Wednesday) is initial announced. Last season’s celebrations enclosed copiousness of superhero outfits and a ridicule UEFA Champions League winners ceremony.
• Coach Peter Stöger’s eyeglasses have turn a means celebre during a club. The Austrian’s changes of eyeglasses are tracked closely by fans, with a red-and-white span apparently his favourites – a colours of Köln as good as his inhabitant team. Stöger, hired in Jun 2013, was acclaimed by a German Academy for Football for quote of a 2015/16 deteriorate when he explained how he doubtful a idea in a compare opposite Hannover that was authorised even yet a round seemed to have been handled: “I offering a ref my glasses, yet he didn’t see them.”
• Köln players like a peculiar bit of acting. A viral video from 2016 speedy a personification staff to use their imaginations as they reviewed a season, Stöger doing his square in a guise of a kiosk owner, while midfield hustler Matthias Lehmann simulated to be a groundsman.
• Their form this deteriorate hasn’t given fans or players many smiles; they have mislaid all 3 of their Bundesliga fixtures so far, yet Stöger hopes their arriving UEFA Europa League plea will enthuse Köln to lift their game. “Arsenal are a clever side with extensive pace. This compare is a prerogative for a good performances final season, yet also a possibility to move some positives to a conditions in a Bundesliga.”
• They are a no-nonsense group during their best. A group but stars – generally given final season’s 25-goal striker Anthony Modeste left a bar for China – Köln’s good strengths are their group genius and resilience in defence. Look out for them on a break: left-back Jonas Hector is maybe their star player, while Lehmann (no propinquity to former Arsenal goalkeeper Jens) provides prophesy and knowledge in midfield.