The U23 of FC Schalke 04 will be guests at Rot-Weiß Oberhausen on Sunday. A real top game.

Rot-Weiß Oberhausen has only lost one of eleven games in the current Regionalliga West season and is in seventh place. RWO still has a game in hand compared to the competition.

The second team of FC Schalke 04 is coming to Oberhausen in fourth place. S04 II has scored a whopping 13 points from its last five matches and has established itself as one of the top teams in the league.

Forecasting spoke to Schalke II coach Jakob Fimpel before the regional duel (Sunday, October 29, RS live ticker) in the Regionalliga West.

Jakob Fimpel, on Sunday you are playing against Rot-Weiß Oberhausen. What kind of game do you expect in the Niederrhein Stadium?

I already expected that Oberhausen would be among the top teams and would also have a say in the promotion. We are looking forward to a great regional league game in a great atmosphere.

What has led to the fact that the U23 of S04 is one of the top teams after a third of the season?

We have simply scored well recently. We have solved this well and confidently in the last few weeks. We have simply been better lately than at the beginning of the season.

In retrospect: Was the goal spectacle in the 6-3 victory in Mönchengladbach something like the chest opener this season?

I don’t know if that was the breakthrough. We played well before that, like against Wuppertal and in Aachen. And if you look at where Düren and Bocholt are now, you have to say that we didn’t have an easy start.

A third of the season is now over. Are the goals perhaps being revised now? The top teams are close together and after all, there are only five points between first and last.

We don’t need to set ourselves new goals, because we are still achieving them. We always have sub-goals that we set ourselves internally. We have these in mind and can thus work through the individual points week after week.

In your opinion, who will win the race for the title and the associated promotion at the end of the season?

I think that all the teams that were on the list before the season started are still in the race. Of course, with Düren and Bocholt, there are also two surprise teams in the mix. But if you’re up there after twelve games, it’s no longer a surprise. These two teams could well be up there with the leaders until the end.