After a 14-year absence, Rot-Weiss Essen returned to professional football last summer. The mood is euphoric, the start of the season goes wrong. After a remarkable intermediate spurt everything seems to be in order, but then seven games without a win follow. The mood threatens to change.
The fans were fed up and grabbed the players hard by the honor. They wanted to see the footballers fight. They wanted to feel that they were defending themselves against the impending defeat at Viktoria Cologne (0:1). That they leave everything they have on the pitch. And the 2,000 or so supporters of Rot-Weiss didn’t seem to have that feeling on Monday evening. A tough judgement. For a club from a hard-working town, even a devastating one. The mood at the cult club on Hafenstrasse is bad again. The fear of disappearing into oblivion creeps back into the bones of the giant steeped in tradition.
Last summer, the club shook off the dust of the sinking and returned to professional football after 14 years. The mood was euphoric. Relegation was the goal, but in some fan souls the dream of something bigger grew. The champion squad from the regional league was not only largely retained, but also cleverly supplemented. Suddenly there was a bunch of footballers with quite an impressive CV for a third division team and footballers with great prospects. There were, for example, the ex-Bochumers Felix Bastians and Thomas Eisfeld or Felix Götze. And there were the talented Isaiah Young, Niklas Tarnat and Lawrence Ennali. A fine line-up in this league.
That is 13th after 22 matchdays. The lead over the relegation zone is five points, anything but comfortable, but not acutely threatening either. Unlike the mood around coaches. Christopher Dabrowski. The wonderfully rocked Hafenstübchen is a place where the truth comes to the (high) table. In the shadow of the renovated stadium on Hafenstraße, the football experts gather before the Rot-Weiss games and discuss the important things with bratwurst, beer and newspaper. One of those things is the coach and his credit has run out, at least in large parts of the fan scene.
The sobering defeat at Viktoria Köln on Monday evening was the seventh game in a row without a win. The topic of staying up in the league could have been ticked off long ago. And also the topic of Dabrowski, who after a disastrous start to the season with three points after six matchdays (bottom of the table) had already been properly counted (by the fans). When things went at home against MSV Duisburg last week, everyone around the Hafenstübchen agreed that the coach finally had to deliver. After the bitter 1-1, which almost became 1-2 in injury time, mildness and criticism balanced each other out. After all, the sly 1:1 by Moritz Stoppelkamp was preceded by a questionable free kick.
But it was also like this: Once again, RWE had not saved a lead over time. Once again, effort (immense) and yield (low) did not go together. The team runs and runs, they fight and fight. But does she play what the sum of the individual players gives? The doubts among the fans are growing, as is the fear. It is the eternal story of this club between hype and panic. The history of this city, the region, which as the former economic heart of the Federal Republic of Germany after the end of the golden age of coal and steel with structural change, sometimes more, sometimes less successfully, against insignificance. When promotion was in jeopardy last season, Coach flew. Christian Neidhart was dismissed from office two games before the end. The most successful coach in club history in terms of points with an average of 2.29 points.
How close or far is Dabrowski to an untimely end? The club does not discuss this publicly. But displeasure is growing in the ranks. However, the coach has already shown how he can get out of awkward situations. When his idea of ??aggressive pressing football didn’t work, he gradually rebuilt his team for more stability and made them more defensive. Now it urgently needs a correction again. The game in the Höhenberg sports park was turbulent and sobering. But not without passion, without fighting spirit, as the coach found, defending himself against the angry shouts from the ranks. “Basically, I’ve never criticized my team’s readiness. I’m not doing that now either.” However, according to “Reviersport” he also said: “You have to invest as much as possible and defend your own goal. Be determined, play clean actions to the end. If this readiness is not 100 percent, but only 99.5 percent, then you will be punished .”
In fact, the 3rd division is considered extremely difficult and uncomfortable. It takes a lot of effort not to crash into the regional league and sink there. Nobody knows that better than RWE. Especially since the resurgence only succeeds as a champion and sometimes not even that, two seasons have to compete in the relegation to play the fourth third division team. And there is not always a reasonable relationship between effort and income, the fight to stay up in the league. Again and again clubs in this league stumble into bankruptcy. Others refrain from promotion for fear of not being able to lift the 3rd league.
A lever that the coach urgently needs to apply: the attack. In the past seven games, his team has only scored three goals, and the fact that they “only” conceded seven (three of them against the outstanding co-promoted team from Elversberg) at least shows defensive stability. Annoyingly only: again and again late goals bring the team to deserved points. Ron Berlinski, who wears himself out as much as possible in the storm, but far too rarely feels good opportunities for himself, says the “Reviersport”: “Maybe we should just put our heads together and develop a plan on how we can generally stage the strikers more. It not only lacks luck, but also determination in the last third, the last pass. We have to force the luck.” Next chance on Sunday, 2 p.m., on Hafenstraße. Opponents then: Borussia Dortmund II. A game against fear.
