📼 1. FC Köln Videos

1. Fußball-Club Köln 01/07 e. V., better known as simply 1. FC Köln (German pronunciation: [ɛf ˈt͡seː ˈkœln] ) 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 will compete in the Bundesliga, following promotion as champions of the 2024–25 2. Bundesliga 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 ([ʔɛf ˈtseː]). Köln play at home in white and red, both colours having been used as the main shirt colour throughout its history. The club's longest-standing and fiercest rivalry is with Borussia Mönchengladbach, against whom they contest the Rhine derby. Although Mönchengladbach is not located along the Rhine, both clubs are based in the Rhineland cultural region. Köln also has rivalries with two other Rhineland-based clubs: 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 150,000 members, making it the fourth largest club in Germany.