Rot-Weiss Essen’s wild longing
The greedy monster from the regional league
By Tobias Nordman
01/26/2022, 8:44 p.m
The longing is great on Hafenstrasse: Rot-Weiss Essen finally wants to return to professional football – and this season it should finally work out. The squad is outstanding, the results are right and now the club has set two pithy exclamation marks within two days.
Stephan Küsters watched the Rot-Weiss Essen footballers celebrate – and was annoyed. But only in a subordinate instance over the wild jubilation of the big rival. The head of sports at Wuppertaler SV was very angry about his team’s (too) anxious appearance in the top game of the Regionalliga West, as he admitted to “Reviersport”. In fact, the guests had missed the chance this Sunday to massively spoil the joy of the second half of the series for the Über-Team. With 2:1 the victory in the top game went to the top of the table. And just how important this victory was for the Reds and Whites, Küsters saw in the jubilation, which seemed to him as if the rival had won the championship.
Well, it’s not that far yet, after all Essen has to play another 17 games before the season would end in a regular way (you never know what’s coming because of Corona). The advantage over the closest pursuer is only four points (or seven, with a game still to come in Ahlen). The first pursuer is Wuppertaler SV. So you can guess how angry the head of sports really was after this bankruptcy. Man, what an opportunity that was to tease the top favorites for promotion to the 3rd division! And with Küsters, at least two other sports directors and their teams will have expressed solidarity in their frustration with the result. Because four clubs deliver a spectacular showdown in the fight for a return to official professional football. Fortuna Cologne and Preussen Munster join the top game opponents. Rot-Weiß Oberhausen, on the other hand, has lost touch a bit. Traditional names in league four.
Even if it’s actually a fight “everyone against everyone” at the top, it somehow just seems to be about beating Rot-Weiss Essen. The team from Hafenstrasse 97a is the giant of the Regionalliga West. Somehow too big for this league, but have been trapped in it for 14 years. The escape from this football prison just didn’t want to succeed – after a few unsuccessful attempts everything was actually perfectly prepared last season. The squad was well put together, the results outstanding. After 40 match days, Essen had collected 90 (!) points – three fewer than Borussia Dortmund’s reserves. In a more spectacular way, no club had probably failed to rise.
“Cultural assets worth protecting since 1907”
RWE is a powerful phenomenon. A legacy of the old Ruhr area. That may be many clubs in the pot. Or want to be. But only a few have preserved the rocked-out charm of the mining heritage like the Elf from Hafenstraße. Even if a lot of money is now also being handled here. “Cultural assets worth protecting since 1907” is the club’s slogan. While Borussia Dortmund and FC Schalke 04 have long since emancipated themselves from the area’s dirty past and (sometimes more, sometimes less) have become radiant brands, the beloved image of honest hard work is lived out much more elsewhere. At VfL Bochum they are trying, at SG Wattenscheid 09 they have failed several times and MSV Duisburg has to be careful in the third division relegation battle not to fall into what feels like insignificance.
The venerable Georg Melches Stadium.
In Essen, the charm of rocking was manifested architecturally for years. Visiting the Georg Melches Stadium. Guests who stopped by from the mid-1990s discovered the transience of the old days in the missing West Stand. It had to be torn down. In the meantime, the stadium has been rebuilt a few meters away. How much myth can still be found in the former “German Highbury”? In times of recurring ghost games, this can hardly be answered. Hafenstraße has remained a place of worship. And that’s his name again. The club renamed the home ground after acquiring the naming rights on January 1st. The stadium in Essen became the stadium on Hafenstrasse. And the stadium on Hafenstraße is to become a fortress. At some point again with the maximun to fans who can participate in the financing of the naming rights through a fundraising campaign. Closer to the fans, that’s hardly possible. With those loyal followers who were always there. No matter how bad things were for their club, which had been forged into a legend by great players like Willi “Ente” Lippens, World Cup hero Helmut Rahn or Horst Hrubesch.
“That is our mission, our motivation”
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. “We are one of the clubs that there are not many in Germany anymore,” said CEO Marcus Uhlig in an interview with ntv.de almost two years ago. “TSV 1860 Munich, Eintracht Braunschweig maybe, 1. FC Kaiserlautern certainly, where there is such an incredibly broad base. A lot of people are just waiting to get an initial like that again. This desire for success, back in the third division coming is so incredibly noticeable. That’s our mission, our drive, to make it more likely that we can do it again.”
They came so close, they failed so dramatically. But in the disappointment, the club vowed not to leave the path they had chosen. Coach Christian Neidhart, who was already responsible for last season, announced the goal for the summer of 2021 before the first kick-off. And for first place, everything that made sense for the mission was made possible in the squad planning. Although RWE had to cope with painful departures, including Amara Condé (1. FC Magdeburg) and captain Marco Kehl-Gomez (Türkgücü Munich), top players such as defender Daniel Heber, perhaps the best central defender in the league, or the goal phenomenon Simon Engelmann were able to hold off will. New signings like José-Enrique Rios Alonso (VfB Stuttgart II) and Luca Dürholtz (SV Elversberg) hit the ground running.
RWE coup: Thomas Eisfeld.
(Photo: picture alliance / Guido Kirchne)
But that was just the overture on the transfer market, because Essen garnished their not cheap top squad with numerous first and second division experienced professionals with two non-club delicacies. Felix Bastians, who played for SC Freiburg and VfL Bochum, among others, signed on in late summer. And only one day after the victory against Wuppertal, the red and white surprised with Thomas Eisfeld. The 29-year-old playmaker was promoted to the Bundesliga with VfL Bochum, but has been looking for a new challenge ever since. Eisfeld, just so you can understand what kind of coup that is, was trained at Borussia Dortmund and Arsenal FC. That says it all.
The Essenes, they are extremely robust this season. Robust against the attacks of opponents that could only land a true effect hit once. On the second day of the game, the first home game of the season on the legendary Hafenstraße was lost with 1:4 (!) against SV Straelen. After that, this greedy monster ate its fill through the regional league. But the club is also resilient to internal problems. Captain Dennis Grote, 2009 U21 European Champion with Manuel Neuer, with Jérôme Boateng, with Mats Hummels and with Mesut Özil, who had been trained in the RWE youth team from 2000 to 2005, caused a great deal of excitement at the end of last year. The 35-year-old had received an offer from ex-club Preußen Münster, of all things, and it was probably a very lucrative one. And he wasn’t averse to accepting it. Discussions broke out in the club, and the captain was released. Losing the “boss” to a direct competitor was unthinkable. And so, for the rest of the season, Grote will be a spectator of the promotion thriller.
Nobody (yet) knows how this will turn out. But in Essen they suspect something. Even if they are warned from past experience. A myth in fan circles says that RWE is always somehow doomed to fail. This belief in “fucking up” (as they say in the pot) would probably not be taken away if the team led 1-0 in the 91st minute of the last matchday and actually only needed one point to climb… But maybe they will at some point say that January 23, 2022, when Essen celebrated the victory against Wuppertaler SV like a championship, was one of the most important days in the club’s history. The younger definitely.