Wuppertaler SV’s U19s won the U19 Lower Rhine League and have thus been promoted back to the U19 Bundesliga West after a year’s absence.

After being relegated from the U19 Bundesliga last season, Wuppertaler SV’s U19s were able to make up for this slip-up. On the last match day, the young players were crowned champions of the U19 Lower Rhine League.

The WSV U19s had almost lost everything. Having started the promotion round as the clear leaders, with the best eight teams of the first round playing off for the championship, they suddenly couldn’t do much. After a draw against TSV Meerbusch (2:2), a defeat against SG Unterrath (0:2) and another draw against ETB Schwarz-Weiß Esssen (1:1), the league lead was suddenly gone before the last two games.

“We made it unnecessarily tense, we were on top the whole season and now had to play chasers the last two matchdays, that was of course disappointing. But that makes us all the happier that we made it after all,” admitted a relieved coach Samir El Hajjaj.

The SG Unterrath had everything in their own hands and could have been crowned the sensational promoted team with a win at home against TSV Meerbusch. But nothing came of it, because although Meerbusch had nothing at stake, they held Unterrath to a 1-1 draw.

The WSV made impressive use of this advantage. After 90 minutes, the score was 6:0 against SC Velbert with goals from Jef Tchouange, Lorik Rama (2) and Dorian Wächter (3).

No big celebration – but success for the club

Due to these circumstances, there was no big party afterwards, as the champion coach revealed: “We are very happy and very proud that it worked out. We no longer believed that Unterrath would slip up. Accordingly, we haven’t planned any big celebrations. We’ll see if we fly to Mallorca again next weekend.”

Until the spring, El Hajjaj was also co-coach of the 1st team in the Regionalliga West in addition to his work with the U19s. But that’s over now, and that’s where it will stay in the coming season, as the coach makes clear.

He would much rather focus on the important substructure, the goal and importance of which is already known, as El Hajjaj explains: “It is very important for the first team that the A-youth play in the Bundesliga. It gives us better players and an easier path to the regional league. Now it’s a matter of continuing to play like this so that we can maintain this next season. “