Steffen Baumgart didn't feel like drinking a whiskey from his collection, which now has almost 200 bottles.

He was "too exhausted" for that, he said after 1. FC Köln's 3-1 win over arch-rivals from Mönchengladbach.

In return, the trainer allowed himself an even more exclusive treat when he jumped around for a few moments alone in front of the exuberantly celebrating corner with the Cologne fans and let a fist circle.

"I wasn't in the corner every time, but I was there in the derbies," he said.

For the first time in more than 30 years, FC has won both Bundesliga duels in one season with Borussia Mönchengladbach, and the Rostock native will be remembered for this for a long time.

But Baumgart can be trusted to leave something much bigger behind at the cathedral - memories of his club's second European Cup participation in this millennium, for example.

In any case, he hits the right note in Cologne's traditionally delicate handling of considerations about possible games in London, Rome or Amsterdam: "We are one of the four or five teams that play for international competition, why shouldn't we do that openly communicate?” When he says it, it sounds like down-to-earthness and not the old Cologne hubris. Baumgart is a master at playing with emotions.

Baumgart has refuted the initial suspicion

In his first phase in Cologne, he was still suspected of being one of those motivators who can charge teams with a lot of energy for a few months, but whose rhetoric eventually loses its effect.

The Cologne coach has long since invalidated this assumption.

For one thing, no player seems to be bored by Baumgart's speeches, which, as Baumgart once admitted, are quite repetitive.

But he enriches his explanations with technical details that the players can work well with and that sometimes seem quite idiosyncratic.

For example, Baumgart has ordered that we please refrain from playing with the hoe.

"Hake is actually forbidden by our coach, he doesn't like to see that," said Florian Kainz in Mönchengladbach after he had started his goal to make it 0:2 with a clever hack in midfield.

"Heel is mostly loss of possession, now it worked.

But I'll keep trying to drive them out of it," Baumgart explained, citing two other scenes in which similar actions had failed.

This strangely traditionalist view is open to debate, but Baumgart can argue that technically he is almost always correct.

The courageous pressing football that he demands of his team works consistently, that can be said with absolute certainty four games before the end of the season.

Just like FC's clever wing play, with which Borussia was completely overwhelmed in the first half.

The 0:1 by Anthony Modestes was preceded by the 500th ball from the outside lane in front of the opposing goal.

"It has always been our game that we come over the wings," said Kainz.

The honesty and clarity with which Baumgart guides the Cologne team through the season is probably the main reason why the 50-year-old coach's less happy moments have so far been quickly forgotten.

A little film published by the daughter from the family's private living room, where Baumgart raged in front of the screen during corona isolation when his team played against Freiburg, will probably no longer exist.

This mixing of private and professional life seemed likeable on the one hand, but also very unprofessional at the same time.

Sharply worded statements about the club's difficult local political desire to expand Geißbockheim or its view of Florian Wirtz, who trained at FC, moving to Leverkusen long before his time, threatened to slide into populism.

But when it comes to football, Baumgart's pronouncements have substance.

Even skeptics can no longer avoid this realization, after almost six years of this underestimated coach as a professional football coach, which have been very successful almost all of the time.