Class struggle against Schalke 04?
Diva Rot-Weiss Essen storms through the 3rd league with drama
By Tobias Nordmann
November 14, 2023, 7:14 p.m
Rot-Weiss Essen barely managed to stay in the league last season. The fans rage against the coach – six months later he is the celebrated man. RWE is cautiously sniffing promotion in the 3rd league, but of course not without drama.
Excerpt from a WhatsApp chat with a Rot-Weiss Essen fan: “Say something positive about Dabrowski again.” Behind it is a fiery red angry smiley, sent on October 7th, 2023. That Sunday, the cult club was beaten 0-5 by SC Verl on their local Hafenstrasse. It was the second slap in three days, previously the Red-Whites had lost 4-0 to promoted team SpVgg Unterhaching. Hardly anyone in the Essen community could understand what was going on again. Because the debacles followed the furious home win against the dominant team in the 3rd league, the 3-1 win against Dynamo Dresden.
Now there is hardly a fan base that is puzzled more often than that of the Essen team. Maybe that of the fickle Borussia from Dortmund. But if there is something that has worked excellently at RWE in recent years, it is the unpredictability of its own performance. For years, the traditional club, which is forever linked to the old heroes Willi “Ente” Lippens, Helmut Rahn and Horst Hrubesch and is under the protection of the late legend Pelé, fought its way through the lowlands of North Rhine-Westphalia football, despairing at the bottleneck of the pig league (Regionalliga West) before finally returning to professional football last season.
Moody as part of the club DNA
And again the red and white diva struck hard. The whimsy is so deeply anchored in this club’s DNA that the fans themselves can’t keep up with their racing emotions between total euphoria and doom and gloom. And so no one should be surprised that last Sunday in the stadium there were calls for the coach, for Christoph Dabrowski. For the Dabrowski who most fans would have preferred to chase off the court at the end of last season. The season’s goal of staying in the league was achieved, but it wasn’t confident. Scarves and shirts with expulsion slogans were in the works. And at the beginning of this season he also struggled to win the hearts of the supporters. The coach was quickly identified as the root cause again. The team, which was rebuilt in the summer – fewer big names, more big guys (physicality was the key word) – did not deliver as they should have done according to unwritten club law. Means: work until you drop.
This passionate dwarfing of football happiness distinguishes Rot-Weiss Essen from many other clubs – including in the region. Of course, the results have to be right. But great luck comes through the Borbeck district when the players’ jersey color can no longer be recognized. Who needs double passes or tiki-taka? And this also explains how the team and players have grown together this season. There is running and working on the field, there is football on the field. The spirit of the glorious industrial past is brought back to Hafenstrasse. That’s how it has to be. There were five wins in a row after the Verl debacle. For comparison: In the shaky last season there were only eight in total and one at the green table.
And then the captain flies out…
But the Essen team’s unexpected upswing, which has now pushed the club up to third place after 15 match days (three points ahead of Verl, of all things), cannot be explained solely by practicing virtue.
A personnel decision caused the wind to change. Three days after the devastating slap against Verl, the Red and Whites surprised everyone by sacking captain Felix Bastians. And they threw poisonous words at their leader, who had already played for SC Freiburg, Hertha BSC and VfL Bochum: He was expected to “perform not only on the pitch as a captain, but also as a leader beyond that “We are increasingly no longer able to comply with the need to move forward in the space and in the cabin. Without going into too much detail, we all assess this measure as not only necessary, but as having no alternative in order to provide a clear impulse,” the statement said. You will only be successful “if sensitivities and egoisms are put aside and everyone subordinates themselves 100 percent to the big picture.”
Last-minute victories create euphoria
Worked. Already in the following game. 10,000 fans from Essen traveled to Dortmund to support the team against BVB. Against their second representation. An insane onslaught that hardly any other third division team could handle. The love for this club is limitless, no matter how great the pain. The game took place in the former Westfalenstadion, RWE won 2-1 and hasn’t stopped winning since. And how good these successes sometimes taste. With MSV Duisburg, who were fighting hard for survival, RWE first shot the ball into the net in the 89th minute, only to escalate the score four minutes later, 2-1. Derby victories release great emotions. No less dramatic and thrilling: The 2-1 win against Arminia Bielefeld, where the appendix collapsed shortly before the end of the game when the equalizer was scored. But again the players did everything they could to turn things around in the 91st minute. They were successful.
The last stop on the resurrection journey so far, last Sunday. Home game against Waldhof Mannheim, under the eyes of club legend Otto Rehhagel, 2-0 and suddenly anthemic admiration for the coach: “Olala, we have a coach, olala, Dabro wonderful”. He only briefly indulged in the moment of affection and then emphasized: “We’re very happy at the moment, but we’re realists – maybe the environment and the fans are left out.” Message via Whatsapp from the RWE fan: “Now relegation against Herne West!”* Three smileys laughing with tears – and the warning: “But first 13 points to stay in the league.”
*Note. d. Editor: the second division team FC Schalke 04, which is currently threatened with relegation