When Viktoria Köln play host to Rot-Weiss Essen on Tuesday (7pm, RS-Liveticker), some RWE fans will probably think that it’s the rich Viktoria coming. Those days are over.
In seven years in the Regionalliga West, FC Viktoria Köln did not have a good reputation among the fans of the competition. To exaggerate, Viktoria waved the banknotes and the players signed in Cologne-Höhenberg. Especially players with first, second or third league experience. But those days are over. Only captain Marcel Risse, with his Bundesliga past, still fits into this old Viktoria prey scheme.
“With my signing with Viktoria, we have committed ourselves to this path, that we focus on players who are capable of development and who are very talented. That can only be the way. We have seven home-grown players in our third division squad and have kept over 20 players. We want to take the next step with them. We are confident that both the players and the club will continue to develop,” coach Olaf Janßen recently told RevierSport.
We’re going down this path and we’re going all the way. The DFB also appreciates our work. Last season, we received 369,000 euros from the DFB funding pot. You get this money when you have your own young players in the professional squad.
Franz Wunderlich
Take a look at the Viktoria squad to see that these are not just empty words. With David Kubatta, Ben Hompesch, Ilhan Altuntas, Florian Engelhardt, Luca de Meester, Florian Heister, Hamza Saghiri, Benjamin Hemcke, Youssef Amyn and Seok-ju Hong, there are no less than eight home-grown players in the Cologne third division squad. The latter two were even in the starting eleven on matchday 1 at SV Waldhof Mannheim (1:3). Overall, the Viktoria team is the fourth youngest team (average age 23.4) in the 3rd division. Only SC Verl (23.0) and the U23 teams of Borussia Dortmund (21.2) and SC Freiburg (21.0) are even younger.
And last season there were already seven home-grown players in the third division squad. “We’re going down this path and we’re going all the way. The DFB also appreciates our work. Last season, we received 369,000 euros from the DFB funding pot. You get this money when you have your own young players in the professional squad,” reveals Viktoria’s sporting director Franz Wunderlich.