Fortuna Köln’s success has returned after a poor start to the Regionalliga West season. Coach Markus von Ahlen talks about the current form.
The start to the Regionalliga West season did not go at all to the taste of fans and officials for Fortuna Köln. After only two points from the first five matches, the team was deep in the bottom of the table.
“We knew that we had undergone a major upheaval. At the beginning, we lacked a sense of achievement, but now we have worked very hard to achieve it,” said coach Markus von Ahlen, summing up the difficult start to the season.
Von Ahlen is referring to the sense of achievement. At the end of August, with the match against SC Wiedenbrück (1:0), the tide turned. The Cologne team picked up 16 points from the next six matches. On the penultimate matchday, they suffered a minor setback against Fortuna Düsseldorf’s U23 (1:4), before they were able to celebrate three points again against SV Straelen (1:0).
For von Ahlen, defeats like the one against Düsseldorf are not a setback, but spur him on to continue working hard with the team: “There are always things that could be better. There is potential for improvement in every respect, in every phase of the game. Every day it’s about always readjusting, working on things and maintaining them. “
Development taken, demands not yet met
He continues: “I think when you make such a big change, it’s simply a matter of coordinating the whole thing and developing automatisms. The word “develop” also implies that sometimes it takes a little time. And we’ve done that well in the last few weeks. We have performed as a unit and automatisms have taken hold.”
With 21 points from 13 games, Fortunen are currently in eighth place. Von Ahlen also knows that the expectations in Cologne are different, but doesn’t want to look too far into the future: “It’s clear that due to the poor start to the season, we were running a little behind our hopes and expectations in the standings. Now we’ve improved our situation, but we haven’t set ourselves any concrete goals. The focus is only on the next game against league leaders Preußen Münster (editor’s note: Sunday, 6 November, 2 p.m.). “
