1. FC Köln: Ricardo Cabanas resigns from Grashoppers Zurich
Author: Eduard Bopp
When Ricardo Cabanas (42) was not athletically happy at FC, he withdrew his release clause in June 2007. Now he has lost the hinge at short notice at his home club Grashoppers Zurich.
Zurich. Do you still know “Kabänes”? After the Cologne spirit, the FC fans once named the midfielder, who was hired from Switzerland with new coach Hanspeter Latour (74), when he came to Geißbockheim during the winter break in 2006.
But neither the sympathetic “Bergdoktor” nor his captain and even shooting star Lukas Podolski (36) were finally able to save 1. FC Köln from literally “bitter” relegation.
And then at the 2006 World Cup in Cologne, the RheinEnergie Stadium was also the location of Cabanas’ personal summer drama, as he too missed a penalty in the round of 16 and Switzerland was knocked out against Ukraine (0: 3).
Ricardo Cabanas returns to the Hoppers as a youth coach
After the resurgence project with Christoph Daum (68) and a wildly assembled mercenary combo failed brutally in the following season, the “Kabänes” literally didn’t get any. The 1.73-meter-tall technician with the number 15 is returning to Cologne and to Latour and the Hoppers, where he had to end his active career in 2012 due to injury.
Latour remembers EXPRESS.de: “I already knew Ricardo when he was still playing in the GC junior team and I was their coach. Later we also joined the first team at the same time. “
The joy of the fans of the traditional club was all the greater when it became known that the well-deserved ex-national player (51 international matches / 4 goals) and three-time national champion, sold as media-shy, was returning to his home club in March 2021.
According to this, Cabanas, who heads the FooTeCo youth department (training for 12 to 14 year olds), resigned because the business conduct in the association was “incompatible with his own values,” which is why the head of FooTeCo died early and drew the consequences.
Career after career: will Ricci Cabanas now be a teacher?
Nothing was known about the exact reasons. The fact is that the structure of the club does not seem everyday, as the owner of the GC is the Chinese Jenny Wang, who of course hardly shows up on site due to the pandemic.
After the contract expires, “Kabänes” would in any case have more time to devote himself to his studies. After his career he studied history and Spanish linguistics.
“I can well imagine teaching at a school that focuses on future top athletes or one day I will become president of the Grasshopper Club Zurich,” he said in a “Blickwinkel” interview in February about possible plans at a grammar school to teach.