Against SC Freiburg, 1. FC Köln will have to replace another manager in the form of Steffen Baumgart, who is in quarantine. Visiting coach Christian Streich sees a possible advantage in the absence of his Cologne colleague.
From 2013 to 2020, Jenke von Wilmsdorff wanted to know exactly. In the documentary series “The Jenke Experiment”, he tested the consequences of social issues such as alcohol abuse, malnutrition with fast food, drugs, poverty or cosmetic surgery in his own body over days and weeks. For this, von Wilmsdorff moved into the corresponding situations at the risk of his own health and impressively documented the effects on body and psyche.
A kind of experiment is also taking place at 1. FC Köln this week: After Steffen Baumgart had to go into quarantine on Wednesday due to a positive Corona test, the Bundesliga club is testing – albeit forced – how much loss of leadership a Bundesliga team can cope with in the match against SC Freiburg on Saturday.
After FC had already given away something like Baumgart’s right-hand man on the pitch to Chicago Fire FC in Major League Soccer during the winter break in the form of defender Rafael Czichos, and Cologne’s outstanding strategist Ellyes Skhiri missed the first three second-round matches due to his participation in the Africa Cup, Baumgart is now the absolute leading figure out.
Baumgart will therefore be able to observe from his quarantine at home on Saturday to what extent his absence will affect the Cologne game. To what extent the team has internalised his ideas – and is also able to implement them without Baumgart’s speech before and during the game as well as during the half-time break just as well as they have done in the games so far this season.
Even Streich sees possible plus point for Freiburg
You only have to look at Baumgart’s pre-match speeches in the dressing room, which the club’s own documentary “24/7 FC” repeatedly provided insights into, or the way the 50-year-old constantly coaches his professionals under high tension during the 90 minutes to guess that FC matches can certainly take a different course with and without Baumgart’s physical and, above all, verbal presence.
Christan Streich also sees Baumgart’s absence as a possible plus point for the visitors: “He is not on the sidelines, his strong presence is not there. It’s possible,” explains the Freiburg coach, “that one or the other player will miss something. “
Pawlak wants to be “very objective “
After all, Baumgart’s deputy, co-trainer André Pawlak, represents a completely different type of football coach. It is not for nothing that the 50-year-old, who is standing in for a Cologne head coach for the third time (Markus Anfang, Achim Beierlorzer and now Baumgart), declared that he could not and did not want to copy his boss. He also announced that he would keep his speech “very factual”. Just as Pawlak – and this is not a point of criticism – is.
Unlike Baumgart, Pawlak will coach the FC professionals from the sidelines. And with 10,000 fans in attendance against SC Freiburg, less of what the coach sends out will get through to his players.
The loss of Czichos and Skhiri has – if you look at the performances and less at the results of the three second-round games – been absorbed by FC in a decent way. Will Cologne’s game now work without the vociferous prompter Baumgart? Or will the coaching staff abandon the original idea of letting Skhiri take a breather after his participation in the Africa Cup and not play against the Breisgau team?
Such a change of heart would be understandable. The Tunisian, who is, however, showing signs of a slight cold, would be an absolute performer in the central role in front of the defence and would at least replace some of the leadership that has been lost due to Baumgart’s absence.
The latter will leave all decisions to his coaching team during the game. But the boss will decide on the tactical approach and the line-up, and thus whether Skhiri will start or not. Which means that he will at least have a decisive influence on the general conditions of the Baumgart experiment in Cologne.
