Köln on cloud nine following dramatic draw with Wolfsburg, Jakub Kaminski sets new Bundesliga record | OneFootball

The total insanity that was Saturday afternoon’s 3-3 draw between VfL Wolfsburg and 1. FC Köln produced no shortage of stories. Two of them happened to belong to one single solitary player: Polish attacker Jakub Kaminski. The 23-year-old’s second Bundesliga goal of the season helped visiting Köln draw level with Wolfsburg at 90+14. The goal came with some Bundesliga history attached to it.

Kaminski’s 3-3 technically constitutes a new Bundesliga record. Since the recording of the precise minute of injury time goals began in the 1992/93 season, no German top flight professional has scored so late. The previous “record holder” was actually Kaminski’s Köln teammate Marius Bülter, who scored the winner for Schalke at 90+12 in a 3-2 win over Mainz on matchday 31 of the 2022/23 campaign.

Football fans may not necessarily be impressed by such a record as, after all, the concept of injury time has shifted radically over the years. What was once something more arbitrary has now become a precise science. Match officials are instructed to take every second of delay into account when adding stoppage time to a match, in large part due to more VAR, weather, and pyro delays.

Most every German football journalist will nevertheless surely declare themselves impressed with what Lukas Kwasniok has done with newly promoted Köln. A highly successful summer personnel overhaul has seen Kwasniok’s Geißböcke go undefeated through four competitive fixtures. Two league wins and a draw place the cathedral city club in third place in the Bundesliga table.

Former Wolfsburg professional Luca Waldschmidt scored in Saturday’s frenetic six-goal-affair, as did new signings Kaminski and Isak Johannesson. Kaminski technically remains a Wolfsburg player presently working at Köln on loan. It was for this reason that Kaminski opted not to celebrate after netting the late equalizer. Speaking to Sky Germany afterwards, Kaminski mere noted that it had been a “great game“.

Other Köln professionals offered more.

“I want to see exactly this attitude and this spirit in the upcoming games,” Kwasniok noted afterwards at the post match press conference. “So far, after the first ten weeks, I am very proud of my boys.”

“Once again, the guys who came off the bench were decisive,” Bülter added in the mixed zone. “We deserved this point. We didn’t just get seven points, we earned them.”

GGFN | Peter Weis