Rot Weiss Ahlen and Rot-Weiß Oberhausen drew 0-0 on matchday 8 of the Regionalliga West, with RWA interim coach Orhan Özkara celebrating a successful debut on the touchline.

On matchday 8 of the Regionalliga West, Rot Weiss Ahlen snatched a surprising point against promotion aspirants Rot-Weiß Oberhausen. The two teams played 0:0 at the Wersestadion in Ahlen in front of 847 spectators.

Has the “coach effect” kicked in at RWA? One could come to this conclusion if one compares the performance of the Wersestädter on matchday 7 against SV Lippstadt (0:3) with the performance against RWO. After the dismissal of Daniel Berlinski a few days ago, sports director Orhan Özkara stood on the sidelines as interim coach and celebrated an unexpected point win with his squad.

“It was the expected difficult game against a team that has had a strong series and is one of the candidates for promotion. We wanted to be more compact and keep the gaps between the players narrow, and we managed that well. A huge compliment to my team, who kept it up for 90 minutes,” Özkara praised his team.

Even the two sending-offs of Dal (yellow-red, 81st) and Kyere (red, 90+9) did not stop Ahlen from fighting for a draw. “At the end of the day, it was a fair 0-0. We are very happy to take this point and the team needed such a performance. The team showed mentality and emotion and we will build on that next week,” summed up Özkara, whose team is 17th in the table after the point win.

In such close games you sometimes need a bit of luck. But I’m happy that we were able to extend our winless streak of now four league games in a row and that we didn’t allow much defensively.

Jörn Nowak

For the promotion aspirants RWO, the 0-0 was not a satisfactory result, as coach Jörn Nowak said after the game: “We have to live with the point, even if we had naturally expected more.” The missed three-pointer sees Oberhausen drop to fifth in the table and the gap to leaders Fortuna Köln is now four points.

“It was an intense game against an Ahlen team that was very disciplined and brought the expected energy to the pitch after the coaching change. With that, RWA presented us with difficult tasks,” Nowak praised the opponent.

A scene in the 90th minute caused excitement when Kerem Yalcin was brought down in the Ahlen penalty area and the referee decided against a penalty, for the RWO head coach it was a “clear penalty”. “In such close games you sometimes need a bit of luck. But I’m happy that we were able to extend our to-nil streak of now four league games in a row and allowed little defensively. “