The Rot-Weiss Essen U19s came out on top in the derby against Rot-Weiß Oberhausen. The battle for the championship remains incredibly close.

It was a derby in the U19 Lower Rhine League that could have lived purely from the table situation. Rot-Weiss Essen, in second place before the game, hosted Rot-Weiss Oberhausen, who were lurking behind the Esseners. The winner of this top-of-the-table clash would be close on the heels of league leaders TSV Meerbusch.

At the end of an intense and extremely hard-fought match, Simon Hohenberg’s team were able to celebrate. RWE prevailed 4:1 and thus kept the pressure on Meerbusch high.

Mats Brune opened the scoring for Essen in the 32nd minute with a shot from the second row. Mehmet Demirci made it 2:0 (43′) for the visitors with a penalty. After the break, the game was decided early on. Yan Montas (47′) and Etienne-Noel Reck (52′) decided the game. Hüseyin Aldemir’s goal in the 76th minute to make it 1:4 was just a cosmetic finish.

“The game was over very quickly after half-time. We were very effective. After the 4:0, I would have liked us to have been a bit more active, to have stepped up a gear again. We then had the pressure phase again between the 80th and 90th minute, where we hit the post and could have had a penalty – but it didn’t matter,” explained a satisfied RWE coach Simon Hohenberg.

Rot-Weiss once again underlined their championship ambitions with this win. According to the coach, the team from Essen are “playing a very good season in which we hardly let anything slip.” However, the same also applies to the leaders from Meerbusch, who beat Viktoria Buchholz 3-0 at the same time.

The RWE coach is relaxed about the upcoming final spurt: “The boys are developing excellently, even if important players break away from time to time. We’re relaxed for now, want to win our remaining games and then see what happens in the table. “

The Cloverleafs and coach Rafael Garcia no longer have to worry about the championship

The derby defeat took Oberhausen out of the running: “Yes, that’s the case. We knew that a draw or a defeat would generally make things very, very difficult for us. Since Meerbusch also wins almost everything, it’s hard to think otherwise. However, we will continue to do our thing.”

Even though the season is as good as over for Oberhausen, Garcia was immensely proud. The coach took over for Mike Terranova, who is currently sitting on the bench as an interim solution for the first team in the Regionalliga West: “After the change of coach, we played a huge season, winning ten games in a row, which is perhaps easy to say, but not so easy to achieve. So I can only be extremely proud of the boys. “