Kicking out, irritation, chaos
The big panic attack at Rot-Weiss Essen
By Tobias Nordman
5/5/2022, 7:11 p.m
The promotion to the 3rd division is the declared goal of Rot-Weiss Essen. But shortly before the end of the season, the dream threatens to burst with a bang. This has surprising consequences for coach Christian Neidhart, with two games to go before the end of the season, the regional league team withdraws their trust.
Traditional club Rot-Weiss Essen presses the panic button. Coach Christian Neidhart surprisingly has to leave two games before the end of the season. The team is in second place in the table, has officially “lost” only one game in the second half of the season (more on that below) and is only two points behind arch-rivals Preußen Münster. You have to go into great detail to understand what’s going on on the legendary harbor road. The Ruhr area giant, who has been trapped in the regional league for years, is desperately longing for a return to professional football – and threatens to miss this goal again. Like last season, when Essen only had to admit defeat in a spectacular duel to second-team Borussia Dortmund.
The problem with the regional league is that only the first in the table rises. The problem for RWE is: They were number one for a long time, but numerous small fires grew into a conflagration. There was the change posse around Captain Dennis Grote. The 35-year-old had just received an offer from his former club Prussia, a lucrative one. And he wasn’t averse to accepting it. Discussions broke out in the club, and the captain was released. Then there was the firecracker throw in the top game against the Munsters (stopped when the score was 1:1), RWE later lost the game on the green table. As if that weren’t enough, the outstandingly well-staffed team around top players such as Thomas Eisfeld, Daniel Heber and Simon Engelmann somehow got out of step, lost sovereignty, dropped points and Prussia passed.
In this turbulent situation, the next captain had to go. After a few mistakes, goalkeeper Daniel Davari lost his regular place and then his place in the squad. That didn’t happen without background noise either. Davari publicly wondered about the expulsion. Because there was also an embarrassing 3-1 beating against league rivals Wuppertaler SV in the semi-finals of the Lower Rhine Cup (the winner qualifies for the DFB Cup) at the beginning of the week, the Esseners not only missed out on an exciting sporting challenge, but also the chance at least almost 130,000 euros. There are already for every club that competes in the DFB Cup. And how nice such a trip can be, they only experienced last season when, after furious victories over Arminia Bielefeld, Fortuna Düsseldorf and Bayer 04 Leverkusen, they lost to Holstein Kiel in the quarter-finals (0:3).
Unexplained burglaries
Sporting director Jörn Nowak and U19 coach Vincent Wagner should now judge it for the red and white. In fan circles, Neidhart’s premature end caused mixed reactions. In various forums, some supporters consider the expulsion to be long overdue because the performance has not been right for weeks and Neidhart hardly showed any emotions at this emotional club. Others don’t hold the trainer solely to blame. Her argument: In the past three years, the team has regularly collapsed on the home stretch. Among others with the former Hamburger Christian Titz, who then within one and a half seasons made 1. FC Magdeburg from a relegation candidate in league three to a promoted team in the 2nd Bundesliga. Meanwhile, Titz was voted coach of the year.
Curious about the dismissal now: While the club had not yet officially made the expulsion, Neidhart already gave the “WAZ” a memorable interview and talked about the reasons. He was asked to talk to Hafenstrasse at 10 a.m. in the morning. “They told me I was free. That was it – quick and painless.” He didn’t follow up either. “Why should they? The decision has been made.” He hadn’t expected that. “At that point I would not have expected such a decision.” He confessed that being kicked out was a “shitty feeling”. He refuted rumors that parts of the team had opposed him in recent weeks. “I can’t make all 25 players in the squad happy. But I haven’t had any trouble with any player.”
In the meantime, rumors about possible departures from several top performers are causing concern on social media. The most explosive: striker Engelmann, the top scorer in the league in recent years, is said to have signed for Preußen Münster and was suspended by RWE. A duck. According to “Reviersport”, Engelmann trained normally on Thursday. Some fans sense a conspiracy in the small disturbance fires. Oh well. At least it’s not an absurd scenario in case of failure (non-promotion).
At noon, the club also announced that the decision against the coach had been made after “intensive sporting analysis”. Most recently, the RWE bosses had “lost the total conviction that we could achieve our goal in the current configuration,” as Marcus Uhlig, RWE’s CEO, is quoted as saying in the club’s statement. Neidhart leaves after 89 games and a point average of 2.29. By the way, Julian Nagelsmann has the same cut at Bayern Munich. To get the dimensions straight.
The Suffering in the “Pig League”
For the club, it’s a nerve-racking déjà vu with their own past. It’s big, too big for this “pig league,” as it’s called in fan circles. It is well over half a century ago that RWE was a powerful player in German football (cup winner 1953, German champion 1955), but in 2007 the red and white were still playing in the second division. The low point was only reached shortly thereafter, when the club was relegated to the NRW-Liga in 2010 and was only fifth-rate. The club from Bergeborbeck has been playing in the regional league again since 2011. But that doesn’t make anyone happy there. And so this season, after another strong first half of the season, the ambitions grew again.
The first home game of the season on Hafenstraße was lost on the second day of the game, with 1:4 (!) against SV Straelen. After that, this greedy monster ate its way through the regional league. In the first half of the season, the team officially lost two games. However, the game of the 19th matchday at RW Ahlen was not played until March 23rd. In purely sporting terms, it is the only defeat for Essen this calendar year. The alleged broken neck was the draw series against RW Oberhausen, against Alemannia Aachen and at home against Borussia Mönchengladbach II. At that point at the latest they suspected in the stands that the club curse would overtake them again.
A myth in fan circles says that RWE is always somehow doomed to fail. The club still has two game days to refute this myth. However, you are no longer responsible for it against SV Rödinghausen and RW Ahlen. Essen has to hope for a blunder by the Prussians. They still play at SC Wiedenbrück and against the U21s of 1. FC Köln.