FC Kray secured an important victory after nine games without a win. Coach Dimitrios Pappas is relieved and is looking ahead to the final three games before Christmas.

With a narrow but well-deserved 3-2 win over Rhenania Bottrop, the team at the bottom of the table, FC Kray secured a crucial breakthrough in the Landesliga Niederrhein 2. Thanks to the three points, Coach Dimitrios Pappas’s team moved up to 13th place in the standings and is now above the relegation line heading into the weekend break.

Pappas was very satisfied with the majority of the game overall. However, there were one or two situations that bothered him. These primarily involved the first goal they conceded and the final ten minutes that followed.

“We took a 3–0 lead, and then something happened that shouldn’t have: a careless misplaced pass because we were so eager to push forward again,” reported the FC coach, who added: “The final ten minutes reminded us of times when we were still learning. But the three points are what count. We want to get out of the relegation zone, and we’ve managed to do that for now.”

And that was an especially important step at home against the team at the bottom of the standings. For Pappas, the victory was, in a sense, a must-win, but by no means a foregone conclusion—especially given the team’s streak of nine winless games. “If we’d lost to the last-place team, then we would’ve had more to worry about. But it could’ve gone very differently—Mülheimer FC was at the bottom of the table when we lost to them,” says the Kray coach.

Ahead of the now somewhat longer break before the next competitive match, the three points should lift morale among the Kray players. The coach sees it similarly and hopes for a positive effect on his team: “We have a young squad, so this win is good for the guys’ morale.”

For the remaining matches before the winter break, the Essen team is focusing primarily on the home game against PSV Wesel-Lackhausen. This match is sandwiched between away games against the current league leaders, VfB Bottrop and ESC Rellinghausen.

“We’re focusing more on Lackhausen so we can get a good result there. Everything else is a bonus. Sure, we also want to give the other two a bit of a hard time. If it works out, it works out; if not, it’s no big deal. No one is certainly counting on us there,” Pappas says, looking ahead, and adds: “We have a clear goal, and that is to avoid relegation.”