In the Landesliga Niederrhein, VfB Frohnhausen is in the bottom half of the table and, as coach Issam Said describes, “will have to really stretch themselves” to avoid relegation.

After the first half of the season in the Landesliga Niederrhein 2, VfB Frohnhausen is in acute danger of being relegated. Instead of a carefree season, the situation at VfB is more complicated than in previous years. The Essen-based club is five points away from safety – and that’s with one game more.

Coach Issam Said is also aware of the difficulty of this task. In the forecasting interview, the 46-year-old explains the problems of the “catastrophic” first half of the season and why he still hopes to avoid relegation.

Issam Said on…

… the first half of the season in the regional league: The first half of the season was disastrous. We had hoped for much more, negligently left six to eight points on the track and could be in a different position in the table. The team is young and the assessment that we would be at the bottom was wrong. We had a lot of problems, some departures during the season and suddenly we only had a mini-squad available. We couldn’t fix that and it set us back a bit. Nevertheless, the team played really well in many phases. In the end, however, we lost all the direct duels in the relegation battle.

.. the best moment of the season so far: The best thing is to see the team develop. Winning against Dingden and turning the game around against Niederwenigern was really nice to see what a good team we have. We want to capitalize on these moments and get more of them….

the worst moment in 2023: The defeats against Steele or Budberg, where we should never have lost. We had a lot of games like that where we lost because we lacked a striker up front. Due to illness and injury, we couldn’t fall back on a lot of players and only had 13 to 15 men. Also against Lintfort, where we were leading until the 87th minute and actually had everything under control, but then conceded two goals in five minutes. Those weren’t pretty moments.

… the goals for 2024: We’ll have to really push ourselves in 2024. We’re obviously a long way off and it’ll be a really tough task for us. We’ll analyze the situation and see if we can get a few more players, but that’s hard in the winter. Whatever happens, we have to avoid relegation. The quality is there, but we have to be able to handle the pressure. We want to win the first two games and breathe life back into the team. I will try to get the team back on its feet and help it withstand the pressure so that we don’t end up being relegated.