Vincent Wagner celebrated great success with Rot-Weiss Essen. On Sunday, he will face his RWE team as coach of TSG Hoffenheim II in Bottrop
Secretly, Vincent Wagner (38) had wished for a nicer setting for a reunion with his former club Rot-Weiss Essen.
The coach of Bundesliga club TSG Hoffenheim’s U23s knocked on the door of the 3rd division with his team for a long time in the last regional league season. However, Wagner had to let Stuttgarter Kickers and VfB Stuttgart II, who were later promoted, pass him by at the end of the season. Nevertheless, the contract of the long-serving RWE player (2007 to 2014) and later U19 coach was extended by a further two years in Sinsheim.
Next Sunday will not be a competitive match in the 3rd division, but a friendly reunion with the club close to his heart, which he helped to win promotion to the 3rd division as assistant coach at the end of the 2021/22 season
As a player, the former defender celebrated promotion to the Regionalliga with RWE in 2011. Third-division side RWE and Wagner’s TSG talents will face each other at Bottrop’s Jahnstadion from 1 p.m. (from 12:30 p.m. in the live ticker). The match will be played over four 25-minute periods. “As we’re playing in Bottrop and it’s ‘only’ a friendly, the emotions are manageable. I’m definitely looking forward to coming back to the Ruhr region and Essen after two years,” said Wagner in an interview with WAZ.
Wagner is entering his third season as coach of Hoffenheim U23. In April, his contract in Sinsheim was extended until the summer of 2027. The 38-year-old now wants to apply to take part in the next soccer coaching course. Wagner is pursuing his personal path as a coach, Rot-Weiss Essen remains an important topic for him: “I will follow RWE my whole life. The first thing I look at at the weekend is still the Essen result, to see how the boys have done.”
Vincent Wagner: RWE season will be a “challenge”
Ahead of Sunday’s friendly in Bottrop, the family man also knows that Essen have lost a number of key players such as Felix Götze, Marvin Obuz and captain Vinko Sapina. The coming season will therefore be “a challenge”. He also takes the RWE fans to task. “I think Markus, Christian and “Dabro” will master the challenge if the fans are patient again. I hope that RWE can confirm the performance of the previous season and play a stress-free round. I think we could be satisfied with that after the somewhat major upheavals in the summer.”
You can read what else Wagner has to say about the development of Rot-Weiss Essen and the fuss surrounding the transfer of RWE homegrown player Ahmed Etri to his Hoffenheim U23s in the detailed WAZ interview here