FSV Duisburg claimed their second win of the season last Sunday. The goal of (interim) coach Engin Kum, however, is still to stay in the league.

It was such an important victory for FSV Duisburg on Sunday. The bottom team in the Oberliga Niederrhein won 2:0 against Cronenberger SC, even playing for over an hour with a shorthanded team. Coach Engin Kum was correspondingly happy.

After all, the Duisburg team is far from giving up. Despite being ten points behind the leaders, the coach is convinced that the team and the club can stay in the league. “It’s never nice to be stuck at the bottom, but the goal remains a non-relegation place. Anything is possible, the quality is there,” Kum states, also referring to the close games against SSVg Velbert, VfB Homberg or ETB. “In the end, the penetrating power for more was missing.”

For a fortnight now, the former Unterrath youth coach has been in charge of the Oberliga team together with sporting director Erol Ayar. Is the combination an interim solution? “Yes and no,” says Kum. “The team has accepted me super. I do my job 150 per cent. At the moment it’s working, even if it’s difficult.” Apart from him and Ayar, there are currently only two supervisors who take care of the organisational side of things.

With further success, Kum could secure the coaching job at FSV Duisburg in any case. The week before, FSV had already lost only narrowly against the quite prominent promoted MSV Düsseldorf with 0:1. After the 2-0 win in Cronenberg, Kum was “proud” of his team: “It was nice to win away from home. The boys did what we asked them to do. They just focused on their game and really gave everything. “

And should then start there again next Sunday in the home match against SV Sonsbeck. “We can put an exclamation mark on the game,” says Kum, who will have to do without his last remaining centre-back, Blerton Muharremi, who is suspended due to a red card.

From Duisburg’s point of view, it would definitely be something special if Kum were allowed to commit himself to Warbruckstraße for the long term with successes. Since 2015, only promotion coach Markus Kowalczyk has coached FSV for longer than a year. Since then, there have only ever been short coaching intermezzos at FSV for a wide variety of reasons: Daniel Sekic (no game), Kowalczyk again (eight games), Dietmar Schacht (one game), Muhammet Isiktas (eleven games), Bartosz Maslon (eleven games), Dirk Pusch (eight games) and Luciano Velardi (14 games).