Song ready to jump sinking Cologne ship (25.02.2002)
Rigobert Song announced on Sunday that he will quit Cologne if the Bundesliga`s bottom side fail to avoid the drop.
"There is no point in playing in the second division," Song, who is on loan at Cologne from West Ham United, said after Saturday`s 2-0 loss to Nuremberg. "If we are relegated, I will leave Cologne."
Cologne had hoped that Song`s victorious return from Mali where he helped Cameroon win the African Nations Cup would help galvanise the club, but his announcement has had the opposite effect.
Cologne are now eight points adrift of safety with only ten games to play and club president Albert Caspers admitted that the time has come to start budgeting for life in the second division.
"Survival is highly unlikely and we better start making plans for the second division
aswe will have to cut our budget by half," he said.
Caspers has rung the changes in an attempt to stave off relegation, but even new coach Friedhelm Funkel, who replaced caretaker coach Christoph John, confessed that staying up is now highly unlikely.
"I am afraid the second division is becoming a sad reality," Funkel, who has collected one point from his first two games in charge, said. Not a bad return for a side that has not scored in ten games stretching back 959 minutes.
As well as Song, fellow new boys Marc Zellweger and Lilian Laslandes are expected to leave should Cologne go down.
It is also unlikely that Germany Under-21 international Hanno Balitsch, striker Christian Timm and youngsters Alexander Voigt and Markus Proll will stay should Cologne fail to avoid the drop.
