Köln had been here before. “It’s not the second time, but the fifth or sixth time,” said the forward Marius Bülter, “that we’ve sat in the locker room after a game, not able to blame ourselves much, but still left with zero points.” His coach, Lukas Kwasniok, described it as “Groundhog Day”, after “a more than decent performance against top opponents”.
Their words are the signal, if it were needed, that Stuttgart really have arrived at the top of German football. Effzeh’s players and coaching staff alike felt that this fitted snugly into a growing list of hard-luck stories; last week’s home loss to RB Leipzig, last month’s game with Bayern Munich when the champions didn’t take the lead until late on, or even the autumn defeat at Dortmund where they were beaten by Maxi Beier’s goal deep into stoppage time.
