Stale Solbakken had better know what he's doing. In order to move to FC Cologne, the 43-year-old Norwegian is giving up a tidy little sinecure as the Norwegian national team coach, which he was all set to take over at the beginning of 2012. And he’s certainly had a good thing going at FC Copenhagen.

Solbakken is set to secure his fifth Danish Superliga title in six years, and his final season at the club has also been the most emphatic. Copenhagen lead the standings by a downright obese 24-point margin, and with three matches still to play they have heaped up 75 points, one short of a league record.

On top of that, this was the season when Copenhagen became the first Danish team to get into the knockout stage of the Champions League. Unsurprisingly, Solbakken has achieved legendary status with Copenhagen's fans, who fear the good times might be over.

Lifting the mood

Unless he has a killer surround sound system on the TV at home, It could be a while before Solbakken has the bombastic Champions League stadium theme music ringing in his ears again. His challenge at Cologne is to bring stability after a turbulent season. It’s essentially the same challenge every new coach faces at this most chaotic of Bundesliga clubs, but last season really was a doozy.

Cologne's 10th-placed finish in the Bundesliga papers over some fairly large cracks. The team went through three coaches and two sporting directors in the last year, and faced real relegation danger until there were just three games to go. That was when last coach Frank Schaefer resigned, whose up-then-down spell in charge culminated in fans spray-painting a sign at the team's training ground with some choice worlds for the squad: "If you get relegated, we will beat you to death."

But Solbakken's arrival seems to have instantly lifted Cologne's deadly mood. Germany's biggest selling newspaper Bild welcomed him with the headline, "Solbakken smiles his way into the hearts of the fans" and his press conference was full of the usual flatteries: "I'm very proud that I've been chosen to coach here," he said. "Cologne is a great club with a very good name."

Underachievers

This might be true, but it's been a while since Cologne lived up to its glorious past. The last league title was back in 1978, and - a little paradoxically - this season's emotional rollercoaster ended up being Cologne's most successful finish in a decade. The last time the team beat 10th place and 44 points in the top division was 2000-2001.

Since then, there have been three brief but unpleasant dips into the icy waters of the second Bundesliga, and Cologne remains a team with more than a whiff of underachievement about them. The measure of Solbakken's success will be whether he can free Cologne from the annual relegation dogfights and establish them in the top half of the table.

He's not the messiah

As Solbakken admitted, his move from the top of the Danish tree to the unglamorous end of the Bundesliga was a "risky project."

Solbakken, who takes up his new role on July 1, will be Cologne’s ninth coach in seven years. His last Scandinavian predecessor, Denmark's Morten Olsen, who headed Cologne from 1993 to 1995, famously said, "the coaching seat in Cologne is red-hot."

Perhaps this was why Volker Finke, Cologne's sporting director and interim coach for the difficult run-in, was so keen to dampen expectations as he presented Solbakken in triumph. "He can't do it alone, I can't do it alone, and a lot of other people have to help - that's Cologne," he said. "A messiah can't do it here."

This could well be a reference to the last time Cologne unveiled a ballyhooed new coach; a man who was often called their "messiah" in the press: local hero Christoph Daum. He led the Cologne out of the second division and into the top flight, but only needed to see one sputtering 12th-place finish before deciding Turkey’s Fenerbahce was a more rewarding option.

(Incidentally, while Solbakken is not a messiah, he has once returned from the dead. His playing career ended in 2001 when he had a heart attack in training during his first season as a FC Copenhagen player. His heart stopped beating for several minutes and it wasn't until well into an ambulance ride that paramedics were able to revive him. He now has a pacemaker.)

Finke's triumph

If Cologne do have a true savior, it may well turn out to be Finke. He reportedly spent the four weeks since Schaefer's resignation desperately trying to land his prized Norwegian Blue. He even handed the Norwegian Football Federation a six-figure payoff to get Solbakken out of his contract to coach the national team.

Finke has answered a few critics with this handsome signing. It was an open secret that Finke had all but driven Schaefer away from the head coaching position with his meddling in team affairs, and many were expecting the domineering 63-year-old sporting director to seek a pushover whose team selections he could influence. Solbakken is far from that.

He has a reputation in Denmark for long-term thinking, hard work and perseverance. Copenhagen's utter domination of Denmark was not a given when he took over in 2004. It's been a long time since a new coach has arrived at Cologne with real achievements under his belt.

Which is why Solbakken is a confident man. "Statistics can be changed," he said with a smile when confronted with Cologne's merciless record.

But, as the saying goes, the higher they fly, the further they fall. Or, as Denmark's B.T. newspaper put it: "Ready the ejector seat!"

Author: Ben Knight
Editor: Matt Hermann