Schonnebeck Misses Chance to Close the Gap on First Place, Frintrop Gets Ripped Apart

Although there were only three games in the Oberliga Niederrhein on Sunday, they produced plenty of goals.

At first glance, not much was happening: Sunday featured just three matches in the Oberliga Niederrhein, but they were all action-packed.

Take SpVg Schonnebeck, for example. With a home win against FC Büderich, coach Dirk Tönnies’ team—having played one more game—could have closed the gap to just one point behind league leaders Ratingen 04/19. But things turned out differently. Although the “Swallows” managed to salvage a 2-2 draw at the last minute, they missed the chance to close the gap on first place. This was a major opportunity for Ratingen to pull away as league leaders.

The second Essen club in action this Sunday fared much worse. Adler Union Frintrop suffered a 1-7 defeat at SC St. Tönis. Luca Esposito (12′), Tyler Nkamanyi (14′), and Dominik Dohmen (16′) had practically sealed the deal after just over a quarter of an hour.

For the bottom-of-the-table team from Frintrop, a debacle was to be feared. Yannick Reiners initially seemed to put things into perspective by scoring the 1-3 from Adler’s perspective (23rd min.). But Julian Florez (37th min.), Kohei Nakano (48th min.), Edward Lomotey (83rd min.), and Florez again (88th min.) drove the score higher and sealed the debacle for Adler Union Frintrop.

Frintrop sits in sixteenth place and remains in acute danger of relegation. SC St. Tönis, on the other hand, is stabilizing in the middle of the table and is in ninth place.

Points Table

In the third match of the day, FC Monheim defeated newly promoted Holzheimer SG 3-1—after trailing 0-1. Oguz Ayan had put Holzheimer SG ahead (61′). But Aleksandar Bojkovski (75′), Kameron Blasie (81′), and Leonard Bajraktari (93′) turned the game around in favor of FC Monheim.

Monheim has thus climbed out of the bottom of the table and is now in eleventh place. Holzheim, with the same number of points and an identical goal difference, sits one spot behind in twelfth place.