FC Köln is a sports club founded in Cologne, Germany and plays in the Bundesliga. The football team plays its home matches at the RheinEnergie Stadium. The club was founded in 1948 by the merger of the Kölner Ballspiel-Club 1901 and SpVgg Sülz 07 teams and has come to be the most popular football club in Cologne today.
II. Until World War II, there were football teams of similar difficulty in Cologne. The most important of these were the 1899 VfL Köln, VfR Köln 04 (later named Viktoria Köln), SV Mülheim, SpVgg Sülz 07 and Kölner BC 01. These teams were built very close to each other, none of them very strong, and they came after the Ruhr and South Germany teams.
Between 1903-33, Cologne teams won the West German League 4 times and only reached the quarter-finals of the German championship. In the league organized between 1933-44, they became champions more easily because their rivals were Aachen, Düren, Trier and Koblenz, while they were eliminated in the first round for Germany.
The team was founded under the name "Kölner BC" on 6 June 1901 by a few young people who were unhappy with the city's gymnastics team FC Borussia Köln and were interested in football. In 1912 he became champion of the German West League and qualified for the national finals. In 1920, he lost to Borussia Mönchengladbach in the final of the same league and came second.
In 1907, another Cologne team, Sülzer Sportverein, was founded. This team merged with Fußball Club 1908 Hertha Sülz in 1919 to form "Spielvereinigung 1907 Cologne-Sülz". In 1928 they became the German western league champions. In 1933 the most important league in Central and Southern Germany, the "Gauliga Mittelrhein", was founded.
Sülz-Köln became one of the most important teams in the league. He became the 1939 champion, but then his success waned. Merged with VfL Köln and became the league's defending champion. II. Football was suspended after 1944 due to World War II. In 1948, the two teams merged and became 1. FC Köln.