There are afternoons when a game hands a team everything and asks only that they take it. FC Cologne were offered exactly that at the RheinEnergieStadion, and they let it slip through their fingers. A first-half penalty spurned, a lead surrendered in the second half, and a point shared where three had seemed within reach. The 1-1 draw with Werder Bremen felt, by the final whistle, like a defeat dressed in the clothes of a stalemate.

The frustration will linger because the early signs pointed elsewhere. Cologne began as though the fixture belonged to them, pressing high, playing with intent, and carving out a chance inside eight minutes that ought to have set the tone. That it did not was down partly to their own carelessness and partly to Werder's refusal to fold. Niclas Füllkrug made sure of that, arriving in the second half to level a match his side had spent an hour chasing.

For both clubs the outcome preserved a curious symmetry. Each now sits on four points from three games, each with a single win, a single draw and a single defeat, separated only by the narrowest margin of goals conceded. It is the sort of early-season parity that reveals little and settles nothing, save for the nagging sense that Cologne had the better claim to more.

The penalty that got away

The eighth minute framed everything that followed. Cologne won a penalty and handed the responsibility to Thijs Dallinga, whose right-footed effort was struck low and firmly towards the bottom left corner. Karl Hein had other ideas. The Werder goalkeeper flung himself the right way and pushed the ball clear, a save that would grow in importance with every passing minute.

A miss from twelve yards can crush a side or galvanise it. For a few minutes, at least, it did the latter. Cologne refused to let their heads drop, and within three minutes they had the goal their play deserved anyway. The reprieve, though, was only temporary, and by full time the memory of Dallinga's failure had curdled into something closer to regret.

Hein's intervention was the first pivot of the afternoon, the moment that told Cologne this would not be as straightforward as their opening exchanges suggested. A converted penalty would have given them a cushion and a rhythm. Instead they were left to do the job twice over, and the second time they could not finish it.

Maina strikes back

If the penalty miss threatened to deflate the home crowd, Linton Maina restored the noise almost immediately. In the eleventh minute he collected possession on the right side of the box and drove a right-footed shot into the bottom left corner, the finish crisp and unarguable. Ellyes Skhiri supplied the assist, threading the ball into a position from which Maina could not miss.

It was the reward Cologne's early ambition merited, and for a long stretch it looked as though it might prove enough. The lead gave them a platform, and they defended it with a discipline that belied their modest league standing. Bremen, for their part, spent much of the first half chasing shadows, unable to trouble a home side playing with the confidence of one that felt the afternoon turning its way.

Maina's goal was the high point of Cologne's day, a moment of clean, decisive quality. That it ultimately counted for a single point rather than three says everything about what came after the interval, when the balance of the contest shifted and the visitors found the response their persistence had earned.

Füllkrug levels

The equaliser, when it arrived in the sixty-ninth minute, carried the fingerprints of a familiar predator. From a corner, the ball dropped into the centre of the box and Niclas Füllkrug swept a left-footed finish into the bottom left corner. It was a striker's goal, born of positioning and instinct, and it drew Werder level at the very point in the match when Cologne might have hoped to be seeing the game out.

Set-piece vulnerability has undone better sides than these, and Cologne will study the corner with a sinking familiarity. Füllkrug needed only a yard and a half-chance, and he took it with the certainty of a man who has spent a career punishing exactly this kind of lapse. From that moment the initiative belonged to Werder, and the home side found themselves defending a point rather than pursuing a win.

For Bremen the goal justified an afternoon of patience. They had been second best for long spells, but they stayed in the contest, kept probing, and struck when the opening came. It is the mark of a side that trusts its centre-forward to make the difference, and once more Füllkrug obliged.

What it means

The draw leaves both clubs clustered in the middle of the early Bundesliga table, Cologne eleventh and Bremen ninth, level on four points and all but level on goal difference. Three games in, neither has found the consistency to pull clear of the pack, and this result did little to separate them. For Cologne the arithmetic is unforgiving: a win here would have lifted them handsomely, and they had it in their grasp.

The story of their season so far is one of fine margins, and Saturday distilled it perfectly. A penalty saved, a lead protected for nearly an hour, and then a single moment of set-piece slackness that cost them two points. Turn one of those details around and the mood in the RheinEnergieStadion would have been altogether different. As it was, the home supporters filed out with the taste of opportunity missed.

Werder will take the more contented view. A point earned away from home, salvaged through the reliability of their leading marksman, keeps them ticking over and hints at a resilience that could serve them well across a long campaign. Both sides remain works in progress, but for now it is Bremen who leave with the sense of a job half-rescued, and Cologne who leave asking what might have been.