Alemannia Aachen can’t be satisfied with the 3-3 draw against Rot-Weiss Essen. The Kaiserstadt team did a lot of things right, but had some terrible luck in one situation, says coach Mersad Selimbegovic.

For Aachen coach Mersad Selimbegovic, it was the most controversial moment of the game: With the score at 3-2 in favor of Alemannia Aachen, Rot-Weiss Essen was awarded another free kick in the 88th minute just to the left of the penalty area. Franci Bouebari had gone down, and Omar Sillah had blocked the ball.

This gave Essen another chance, and Dickson Abiama capped off his debut by scoring his second goal of the day from a scramble to make it 3-3. Essen then celebrated wildly, which led to a scuffle and, among other things, a fifth yellow card for Michael Schultz.

For Selimbegovic, however, one topic dominated the post-match discussion: the decision to award a free kick before the 3-3 equalizer. “I have to be careful with the officials who run the game,” he said in a very serious tone. “I have to pull myself together week after week. It’s really tough to decide to block the ball at that stage of the game. It’s always these little things working against us.”

Little things on a day when Aachen, on the whole, did a lot right. “There really should only be one winner. And that’s us,” said Selimbegovic. Mika Schroers put Alemannia ahead after seven minutes, and Pierre Nadjombe (35th) and Schroers again (46th) more than made up for Kaito Mizuta’s equalizer (22nd).

“We’re heading in the right direction, and we’re doing it the right way. What we did made sense. We need to focus on the positives. Eventually, there will be games where not every shot on goal goes in against us, and we don’t have to score two, three, or four goals to win.”

Because Essen, who felt defeated after 85 minutes, came back thanks to a rocket from 20 meters by Abiama (85th) and the new signing’s second goal following that very controversial free kick. “We’ll get over this and we have to get over this. Give it our all, step on the gas, and then we have to get that little bit of luck on our side. We really should have gotten three points. In soccer, as in life, there’s no justice, but it’ll even out somewhere,” Selimbegovic concluded.

If Aachen secures that justice in their next home game on Saturday, February 21, at 2 p.m., RWE certainly wouldn’t mind: Alemannia will be hosting SC Verl.