1. Fußball-Club Köln 01/07 e. V., commonly known as simply FC Köln () or FC Cologne in English, is a German professional football club based in Cologne, in North Rhine-Westphalia. It was formed in 1948 as a merger of the clubs Kölner Ballspiel-Club 1901 and SpVgg Sülz 07. Köln competes in the Bundesliga after promotion in 2018–19 following relegation to 2. Bundesliga the previous season. The team are three-time national champions, winning the 1962 German football championship, as well as the Bundesliga twice, first in its inaugural season of 1963–64 and then again in 1977–78. The team plays its home matches at RheinEnergieStadion.
The club's nickname Die Geißböcke (The Billy Goats) refers to the club's mascot, a male goat named Hennes after the veteran FC player and later manager Hennes Weisweiler. The first Hennes was donated by a circus entrepreneur as a Cologne carnival joke. The current mascot is Hennes IX as of 1 August 2019 after Hennes VIII was retired by the club due to old age. Another nickname for the club, more common locally due to its ambiguity, is FC (often written as Effzeh), a common German abbreviation for football clubs. Characteristic for the dialect spoken around Cologne, this is pronounced "EF-tsay", in contrast to the Standard German pronunciation of the abbreviation where the second syllable is emphasized (). Köln play at home in white and red, both colours having been used as the main shirt colour throughout its history. The club has long-standing rivalries with nearby clubs Borussia Mönchengladbach, Fortuna Düsseldorf, and Bayer Leverkusen.
Like many of Germany's other professional football clubs, 1. FC Köln is part of a larger sports club with teams in other sports like handball, table tennis and gymnastics. 1. FC Köln has over 100,000 members, making it the fourth largest club in Germany.
History
Predecessor sides
Kölner BC was formed on 6 June 1901 by a group of young men who were unhappy as part of the gymnastics club FC Borussia Köln and far more interested in football. BC was a competitive side in the Zehnerliga West in the years before World War I who took the Westdeutsche championship in 1912 and advanced to the preliminary rounds of the national finals. Their next best result was a losing appearance in the 1920 league final, where they lost 1–3 to Borussia Mönchengladbach.
Spielvereinigung 1907 Köln-Sülz was established in 1907 as Sülzer Sportverein and on 1 January 1919 merged with Fußball Club 1908 Hertha Sülz to form SpVgg. They won the Westdeutscher title in 1928 and they too went out in the early rounds of the national finals in their turn on that stage. They went on to play as a top flight club in the Gauliga Mittelrhein, one of sixteen premier level divisions established in 1933 in the re-organization of German football under the Third Reich. The side earned generally good results through the 1930s – including a divisional championship in 1939 – but then faltered in the early 1940s. After the 1941 season the Gauliga Mittlerhein was split into two new divisions: the Gauliga Köln-Aachen and the Gauliga Moselland, which included clubs from occupied Luxembourg. Sülz struggled until they were united with VfL Köln 1899 for the 1943–44 season to form the combined wartime side Kriegspielgemeinschaft VfL 99/Sülz 07 which promptly won the Gauliga Köln-Aachen title by a single point over SG Düren 99 in a close race. The club did not play the next campaign as war overtook the region.
A successful new club
After the union of these two predecessor sides (1948), 1. FC Köln began play in the tough Oberliga West in the 1949–50 season and by 1954 had won their first divisional championship. That same year they lost the DFB-Pokal final 1–0 to VfB Stuttgart. Die Geißböcke won their second divisional championship in 1960 and appeared in the national final against Hamburger SV, where they lost 2–3. In the 1962 and 1963 they went on to finish first in the Oberliga West in each of the next three seasons and again played their way to the national final. They won the 1962 match 4–0 over 1. FC Nürnberg resulting in entry to the 1962–63 European Cup where they were one of the favourites to win the trophy. In the first round Köln visited Dundee F.C. of Scotland and lost 1–8, and despite winning the second leg back in Germany by 4–0 they were out of the tournament. In the following year's national final they lost 1–3 to Borussia Dortmund.