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With the second victory under the new coach Markus Gisdol, Bundesliga club 1. FC Köln has left the relegation zones of the Bundesliga. The development at FC is sporty, but within the club the next argument is threatening after already turbulent months.
The occasion is the decision announced on Wednesday to stop a commitment to Chinese football planned for the coming years. The cooperation should include the management of a youth academy in the Shenjang region in order to prepare Chinese talents for professional football based on the model of the Cologne youth academy. If successful, the FC would have received grants of almost two million euros, the club now waives this income. At first the "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger" reported on the end of the Cologne engagement.
Stefan Müller-Römer also had his say in the newspaper. "I understand that the Federal Republic of Germany cannot get past China's economic power completely and that there is an exchange," said the chairman of the FC member council, which had joined the FC board of directors last March after the resignation of the then president Werner Spinner. "But we don't need China in sport. Rather, China wants to extract knowledge from us, which has been possible in the economy for over 20 years, because some of our economic leaders are completely naive," continued Müller-Römer.
Henning Kaiser / DPA
According to FC, Stefan Müller-Römer has expressed his private opinion
These statements have now prompted the club to take countermeasures in a statement. In his statement, the new club president Werner Wolf repeated the statements made in the "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger". It "had to do with pooling resources and setting priorities, because we would have had to employ staff in the project".
Above all, Wolf contradicted Müller-Römer's pithy words: "Stefan Müller-Römer's uncoordinated statements only reflect his private opinion and do not correspond to the official stance of 1. FC Köln." Cooperation with Chinese sponsors is therefore still possible.
FC have been through turbulent months. Spinner was forced to resign last March after a power struggle with former sports director Armin Veh was publicized. Veh himself canceled his contract in November, shortly after announcing that he would not continue next summer. In terms of sports management, Gisdol is the third trainer this year, after Markus separated in April and Achim Beierlorzer in November.