Outstanding: Essen’s Marco Kehl-Gomez (above) against Leverkusen’s Aleksandar Dragovic
The leading Essen Cup fright had to gather first. “Where did we just get to? In the quarterfinals? ”Daniel Davari wondered for a moment. When the 33-year-old goalkeeper had sorted out the immediate consequences of the sensational success over Bayer Leverkusen, he made it all the more precise: “We have to celebrate.” A little joke – because at the weekend Rot-Weiß Essen will have an even more important game than the recently completed highlight in the DFB Cup against the Werkself.
With the 2: 1 after extra time against the supposedly overpowering first division club, the traditional club from the Ruhr area is among the last eight in the national cup – for the first time in 27 years. This will increase the regional league’s cup income to around two million euros. In view of the staff budget of almost three million euros for this season, this is an enormous windfall. “Our whole cup story has already helped us a lot in the Corona context,” commented CEO Marcus Uhlig after the triumph over Bayer – and gave a brief sporting outlook: “We are bursting with self-confidence. We have the first cracker of this week behind us. Now we’re tackling the next one. “
Next Saturday, the cup heroes from the Pott will welcome Borussia Dortmund’s second team to the top game in the Regionalliga West: The BVB reserve is currently leading the table – with two points ahead of Essen, which has played one game less. Only the master goes straight to the third division. The second must come to terms with at least another year of fourth class.
This situation has persisted for Rot-Weiß Essen for ten years. Correspondingly, the club, which celebrated its 114th birthday on Monday, is longing to return to professional football. “We want to go up, and we want to go up with all our might,” emphasized club boss Uhlig in an interview with “nd”. The 49-year-old describes the jump from fourth to third division as “the smallest bottleneck in German football.” And once the kickers from the city of 58,0000 people have slipped through there, one can talk about the great potential that lies dormant in this club.
Until then, the boss decrees modesty – after all, Uhlig knows what environment he is in. He counts the red and whites among the “very few, very special, relatively far below traditional clubs” with “a very special aura”, sees them in a squad with 1860 Munich, Eintracht Braunschweig and Kickers Offenbach. According to Uhlig, these clubs unite not only the enormous fan potential but also the problem that a particularly large number of people always want to have a say – and there is a corresponding unrest. “In the past, the club has talked too much about the day after tomorrow and the day before yesterday,” says the man who has been working for a good three years to anchor the German champions from 1955 in the here and now. The Essenes have made good progress on this path with the latest comprehensive navel gazing. The club, for which celebrities like Helmut Rahn, Willi Lippens and Horst Hrubesch have played, hired a new head coach last summer in Christian Neidhart. In addition, a total of twelve players were dropped, ten others were fresh.
Two of these newcomers caused a subsequent New Year’s Eve fireworks display and a car parade around the Essen stadium on Tuesday evening: first and foremost goalkeeper Davari, who drove Leverkusen to despair with his parades. And goal scorer Simon Engelmann, who had already scored in the cup victories over Bielefeld and Düsseldorf and now knocked the heavily favored Werkself out of the competition with the goal to make it 2-1.
“If I have the ball at my feet, it can always ring,” Engelmann later explained with the same casual ease with which he thundered the ball into the net three minutes before the end of extra time. “You can’t write a better script for a game like this, we’re super proud of the boys,” rejoiced Neidhart, who on Wednesday prepared his team for the big league duel against Dortmund.
His boss is already thinking a lot further. »Of course, nobody knows how the entire Corona setup will develop in Germany and worldwide over the next few weeks and months. But we already hope that we will be able to think about at least a partial opening scenario in the stadiums from Easter, ”says Uhlig. “It would be a bit ironic of fate if you achieved the greatest success here with Rot-Weiß Essen in decades – and none of the fans for whom we all do this can be there.” The club boss of this year’s cup sensation doesn’t want to get used to that. Because he has long since noticed: “It feels so wrong, so strange and stupid – especially in Essen.”
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