MSV Duisburg did what they had to do and are now in the Lower Rhine Cup quarterfinals. But the evening in Krefeld was marked by an unusual event.

It was the 37th minute of the Lower Rhine Cup round of 16 between KFC Uerdingen and MSV Duisburg (1-3) when the floodlight mast next to the opposite stand, occupied by several thousand MSV fans, suddenly failed.

Referee Davide Zeisberg immediately interrupted the game. It quickly became clear that a blown fuse was the cause of the darkness on the field. The players initially ran toward their substitute benches before the referee sent both teams to the locker rooms.

At this point, none of the spectators knew whether and how the game would continue. Then a quick decision was made: the half-time break was brought forward, and the teams played the remaining minutes after the system had been restarted. After a quick change of ends, the second half continued immediately.

In the end, there was “only” a 16-minute delay, with the final whistle sounding at around 9:30 p.m. in front of a crowd of 9,300 spectators at the Grotenburg stadium. Joshua Bitter, Christian Viet from the penalty spot, and Thilo Töpken put the Zebras 3-0 ahead in the first half. Yasin-Cemal Kaya scored a spectacular goal for the Oberliga team shortly before the end. “It was turbulent, and I’ve never experienced anything like it before. We rallied together and just carried on,” said left-back Can Coskun, who replaced captain Alexander Hahn, who was rested for the entire 90 minutes, with the captain’s armband.

When asked, coach Dietmar Hirsch spoke of “force majeure” and did not want to make too much of the incident. “We were told that it would take ten minutes for the lights to come back on. We were able to make substitutions, and that’s just the way it is. There’s nothing you can do about it. We had to accept it.“ KFC coach Julian Stöhr agreed with the MSV coach’s opinion. The KFC fans had to endure some taunting from the MSV supporters during the outage. ”No money again, KFC.”