After the defeat against BVB II, the promotion euphoria at Rot-Weiss Essen should have finally evaporated. SC Verl is also still without a win. On the other hand, Viktoria Cologne surprised with a win against Dresden.
On Saturday, the Essen team presented themselves very defensively with three central defenders and a five-man defense chain when representing Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund. Due to a defensive mistake by Essen, Dortmund still took the lead.
Fink uses mistakes from RWE-Keeper
In the 22nd minute, RWE keeper Jakob Golz lost the ball after a back pass to Bradley Fink, who was then able to effortlessly push the ball over the line to take the lead. Annoyingly, the Esseners had set the first exclamation mark a few minutes earlier in one of their rare advances. But Simon Engelmann’s shot just missed the target.
Missing chances in a game where chances are scarce due to the defensive orientation weighs heavily. BVB was able to get over Kolbeinn Finnsson’s shot, which went into the side netting just before half-time, with the lead in the back.
Essen against Ingolstadt under pressure
In the second half, the Essen team had to do more and they did. But great opportunities remained scarce. Lawrence Ennali missed a good one – after a strong individual performance he failed with his shot from an acute angle (57th minute) by BVB keeper Marcel Lotka. Sandro Plechaty had Essen’s best chance when he came free after a mistake in the Dortmund defense but hammered the ball wide of the goal (84′).
So it ended up being Dortmund’s derby win, which gave BVB a breather in the bottom of the table. RWE now faces the next difficult task on the coming matchday in front of their own audience against promotion contenders Ingolstadt.
Meißner turns game for Victoria
Things went much better at Viktoria Köln than at RWE, who were able to celebrate their third win of the season in the home game against the highly valued Dresdner. After Ahmet Arslan went behind (14′), Robin Meißner turned the game around with a brace (22’/43′) before the break.
After the break, the home side didn’t allow much for long stretches, but were lucky when a shot from Paul Will just missed the goal for Cologne (62′). For her part, Viktoria could have calmed the field more in the 67th minute if Marcel Risse’s attempt at a cross from a short corner had landed in the goal instead of on the crossbar. So the people of Cologne had to tremble to the end.
SC Verl loses against 1860 Munich
Like Essen, SC Verl has to be in the bottom of the table without a win. The losers did not manage to throw league leaders 1860 Munich out of step on Saturday. However, this was extremely unfortunate: Meris Skenderović only scored the 1-0 winner for the guests in injury time, who are now the sole leaders with four wins from four games.
Apart from the dramatic showdown, the game was short on highlights, with the home side getting closer to taking the lead in the first half than their too-passive guests. But first Joel Grodowski just missed the target (31′), and then Eduard Probst failed from close range at Munich goalkeeper Marco Hiller (38′).
