1. FC Köln signs Thijs Dallinga on loan from Bologna with option to buy

Thijs Dallinga is heading to Cologne. The 26-year-old Dutch forward has agreed to join 1. FC Köln on loan from Bologna FC 1909, with the German club holding an option to make the move permanent for a reported fee in the region of €11 million. A Bologna chapter that never quite clicked Dallinga arrived in Serie A in July 2024 when Bologna paid somewhere between €16 million and €18 million to prise him away from Toulouse. The expectations were reasonable: a striker who had just scored 26 goals across 69 appearances in France was supposed to add cutting edge to a Bologna side playing European football. It did not go to plan. In 54 appearances for Bologna, Dallinga managed just five goals, a return that tells its own story about a player who struggled to translate his French form into the demands of Italian football. The gap between expectation and output is easier to understand when you trace Dallinga’s career arc. At Excelsior in the 2021-22 season, he scored 32 goals in just 37 league matches. Toulouse then signed him and he delivered again, scoring 26 goals in 69 appearances, before Bologna came calling with a fee that reflected his stock at its peak. Why Köln moved for him now Köl...