Köln U19

Said El Mala came out of the Cologne academy with the Silver Fritz Walter Medal for 2025 in his hands. Lukas Podolski arrived at the academy in 1995 as a boy and was handed a debut with the seniors in 2003, and behind him came Timo Horn, Jonas Hector, Salih Özcan. Florian Wirtz passed through the U17 side before moving to Leverkusen in 2019/20.

The under-19s reached their high point in June 2025, at the BayArena, against the club that had taken Wirtz. The German A-Juniors championship final finished 5:4. Two years earlier they had beaten Schalke 04 4:3 after extra time for the DFB Junioren Pokal; the first came in 2013, a 1:0 over Kaiserslautern.

Home is the Franz-Kremer-Stadion at the Geißbockheim, which holds 5,457 but seats only 1,900 of them — the rest stand. When a tie draws a bigger crowd than that, the team moves across the city to the Südstadion.

Stefan Ruthenbeck coaches the side.