The Great Worldie

On October 3, Bayern hosted Cologne.

Although Cologne had spent heavily to bring in Podolski, the team's performance in the new season had been far from ideal. After seven rounds, they sat seventeenth in the Bundesliga and were practically the favorites for relegation.

Cologne's head coach was the Croatian Soldo. He had played for Stuttgart for ten years, only retiring in 2006. In 2007, he had returned to Croatia to coach Dinamo Zagreb's Youth Team, then taken over the First Team after the Winter Break to help them through a crisis. His coaching results had been quite impressive.

Last season, Cologne had not faced much pressure in the relegation battle. They had remained in the lower half of mid-table throughout. That summer, they had spent ten million euros to buy Podolski back from Bayern Munich, which raised the Cologne management's expectations for the team's results. That was why they had changed coaches.

But who could have expected that the former prince would return, Soldo would arrive as well, and the team's results would actually get worse?

After all, at the same point last season, Cologne had been tenth in the league after seven rounds. This season, they had instead fallen to seventeenth. How could anyone accept that?

On one hand, this was because the Bundesliga teams had increased their investment, raising the overall strength of the league. On the other hand, after buying Podolski back, Cologne's overall strength had fallen instead of risen. There was clearly something wrong with that.

Because of this, Soldo carried tremendous pressure when taking Cologne to face Bayern away. He had even declared before the match that they would begin their relegation battle immediately, hoping to lead the team out of the relegation zone as soon as possible.

As Stuttgart's captain back then, having played