the terrible feeling of deja vu

Diesen Artikel habe ich im letzten Jahr an die englische Zeitung "When Saturday Comes" gesandt. Zur Veröffentlichung kam es nicht, der Herausgeber schrieb mir aber, daß man in der Zukunft einige Artikel über europäische Clubs plant, die heftige Abstürze hinter sich haben.
Womit wir dann wieder bei RWE wären.......


The Terrible Feeling Of Déjà Vu

It may appear the glory days for Rot-Weiss Essen, German Champions of 1955 and former club of Helmut Rahn ( scorer of the winning goal against Hungary 1954) and Otto Rehhagel are long gone, but the supporters of RWE at least thought they would have the decency not to go down in their centenary year. But in typical fashion for the club, it was not to be.


Since becoming a regular supporter in the mid-eighties, I often wondered where that masochistic element hails from that makes me follow RWE in its often woeful antics.
They have been demoted from the 2.Bundesliga three times due to a withdrawal of license and since 1994 every promotion to the 2.Bundesliga has been greeted with subsequent relegation. RWE have been on the brink of extinction at least twice in the last couple of years and while new or redeveloped grounds appear all around us, the only change the Georg-Melches - Stadium has seen is the loss of the West stand that got knocked down thirteen years ago failing to meet safety standards. This leaves RWE with one of the very few 3-sided grounds in Western Europe…..

Quite an (under)achievement for a still hugely popular club from the Ruhr Area. Essen is one of Germany´s biggest cities with a population of 590000 and as many major companies are based in Essen, you wonder why in times of corporate football they are still considered a skint club always short of money.
RWE got promoted in the summer of 2006, but every supporter painfully remembered how they messed it up just two years ago, when amidst all the euphoria they somehow forgot to assemble a team strong enough to compete in the higher realms of German football.
So , bearing in mind that the coming season would see their centenary, everybody got a bit paranoid when just a few days before the start of the season, the forward line mainly consisted of two veteran strikers Alex Loebe and Arie Van Lent, whose combined age made up to seventy . Director of Football Olaf Janssen and Manager Uwe Neuhaus were so keen on strengthening the defence that they seemed to have forgotten that to win games, you need to score goals (to be fair, they got it right with the defence, only four teams had a better defensive record at the end of the season…). The third striker, Danko Boskovic, who later turned out to be the only forward of any use, missed almost the complete first part of the season due to a torn muscle fibre in the first game at Kaiserslautern.


After a solid start to the season with eight points from the first six games everything went downhill. Uwe Neuhaus got the sack after just one point from the following six games and when he departed we were still waiting for the first away goal ( it came just a few days after his sacking, an own goal from Unterhaching defender Stefan Buck in a 2-1 defeat with Olaf Janssen as caretaker manager). Lorenz Guenther Koestner was appointed as new manager but things didn’t change for the better and when Duisburg scored an injury time winner in a very unlucky 2-1 home defeat just before Christmas, RWE were second from bottom, five points adrift.
In the winter break, Olaf Janssen showed his motivation skills trying to offload Boskovic to various 3rd league clubs (thank god he failed) and when Arie van Lent pronounced his retirement from football due to a persistent knee damage, the stunned supporters were told that “he was never in the first team plans anyway”, begging the question “Well, who was then?”
The transfer window saw the arrival of three more loan players, the fourth one already there being Pascal Bieler, on loan from Bundesliga side Hertha BSC for 50000 €. Now that the season is over we are still waiting for the first proper cross from the German U21 wing back …..

Two goalless home draws against Kaiserslautern and Augsburg (a bore draw if ever there was one) and away defeats at both Freiburg and Jena followed and RWE was virtually down .

Stunningly, with relations between players and supporters now at an all time low, in a one-off day of quality football the mighty 1.FC Cologne got stuffed 5-0 and just five days later the unthinkable happened: After 10 years (okay, it was only 40 away matches in the 2.Bundesliga, as they spent most of the time in the third tier), RWE finally won away from home, 1-0 at bottom of table Braunschweig.
The season went on with general improvement, especially in away games, as RWE won another three in the campaign. But it was at our own Georg-Melches Stadium where things got paltry again. The team resurged the habit of conceding injury-time goals again ( in the end it was a total of six that meant the loss of nine points ) and the dismal quality of the longhoof football still makes you wonder why a healthy average of 16000 attended the home games.
It was a pitiful sight to see the players rush forward in desperation whenever it came to a freekick or a corner knowing it was virtually the only chance to score. Otherwise, it needed a wondergoal from Danko Boskovic to score from open play, something he did in the penultimate match at home against already relegated Wacker Burghausen, when presumably tired of all the long balls flying over his head, he whacked in a volley barely inside the penalty area.
17000 supporters counted down the seconds, when, you guessed it, Burghausen equalised in the 91st minute thanks to Nick Ledgerwood, a Canadian scoring his first and only goal of the season.

So it was all down to the last match of the season. Local rivals MSV Duisburg needed a win to secure promotion and as it later turned out, a point would have been enough for us to stay in the league. It was not to be, Duisburg deservedly won 3-0, opening up the scoring just after half-time with a hotly disputed penalty.
Of course most of the players considered themselfes too good to go down and immediately ruled out staying with the club.
Meanwhile former player and crowd favourite Heiko Bonan has taken over as new manager as the supporters just hope he will not fall for assembling another collection of journeymen and has-beens.

So what’s next, as the new season features fallen giants Borussia Moenchengladbach , Cologne and Kaiserslautern in the 2.Bundesliga, we are back in the Regionalliga Nord entertaining the likes of both Wolfsburg and Cottbus Reserves at our ramshackle ground.
The new stadium is still wishful thinking and one seriously doubts it will ever go past planning state. Somehow I think I have seen this all before. -/M/