Worst league team
© Imago
Two years ago, Rostock FC in 1895 dreamed of promotion to the regional league, today the former GDR second division is sporty on the ground. After 18 games, the RFC is the only league team nationwide who has not yet met a counter. The balance sheet: zero point and 6: 105 goals. Last weekend, the Rostockers collected their highest defeat of the defeat against promoters and table lines of green and white Ahrensfelde-previously only six points-with 1:12 and the highest in the history of the NOFV Oberliga North.
The club surprisingly takes the desolate sporty situation with a lot of humor. “You wanted to see goals? Here you are! … ups, were all of the opponents. Well, the main thing is spectacle! ”, The Summary of the Bottle against Ahrensfelde was titled on the social media channels. At the same time, however, one showed themselves combative: “Now it is time to learn from the mistakes, to stand together as a team and to give everything for the first points in the second half of the season!” A lot has changed since second place in the Oberliga and the victory in the State Cup Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 2023-but what exactly?
The rapid ascent and descent of the club is- once again- closely connected to an investor. With the first promotion to the top division in the summer of 2020, the RFC Richard Kings Atikpo won an entrepreneur from Ghana from the oil and energy sector with good contacts to the government in Accra, which is also chairman of the first division club Legon Cities FC. ATIKPO invested in the Spielbetriebs GmbH, which was founded shortly before in December 2019, with which the first team was spun off. The Ghanaer is said to have even considered a purchase of the association.
With the entry of Atikpos, Rostock FC performed more ambitiously. In addition to well-known players from the region such as the ex-Hansa professionals Johann Berger (25) and Jakob Gesien (27), footballers from abroad also came to team like Marcis Erglis (33) from Latvia, Aleksandr Kulinits (32) from Estonia, Aviv Bitton (23) from Israel, Nino Stojanovic (23) from Croatia (26) From Chile. According to the “Ostsee newspaper“Many players got four -digit salaries. The structures were also professionalized away from the square, the trainer and supervisor team enlarged, and the training times increased up to seven times a week.
Rostocker FC brings the investor entry into Oberliga leadership
The sporting success was not long in coming. After seventh place in the second Oberliga season, the Rostockers finished second in 2023. Only the Hansa reserve stood in the way of the big dream of the regional league promotion. However, the RFC was able to cheer in the state cup, where the team prevailed 5-2 against the association league FSV unit Ueckermünde in the final and solved the ticket for the DFB Cup for the second time after 1943. However, the structural problems began on the sporting highlight.
In the summer of 2023, investor Atikpo pulled back completely out of the club. Why was never really known. However, there had already been financial difficulties in the second half of the season, player salaries had not been paid on time. Due to a debt crisis in Ghana, Atikpo had problems transferring money to Europe, it said. At the end of the season, however, ATIKPO is consoled to all open payments, at least an average six -figure sum. But then the Ghanaer was gone – and with it not only the insolvent Spielbetriebs GmbH, but also more than a dozen players.
The success team of the 2022/23 season broke almost completely, but participation in the DFB Cup prevented at least an economic collapse. With a large part of the income – a medium five -digit sum – the Rostockers financed the entire budget. The fact that less money was now available was reflected directly on the results. With only 23 points from 28 games, the RFC 2023/24 landed in 14th place, but nevertheless did not get off because there were too few promoters. The Rostockers didn’t really want to stay in the top division.
The RFC voluntarily wanted to take a class deeper in the association league, but the application for integration was rejected by the State Football Association, since this was not possible, according to the game regulations, board member Christian Blanck explained to the “Kicker“At the end of last year. “There was only the option to stay in the division or to play three leagues deeper in the national class. That was not an option for us. “
Rostock FC is forced to stay in the Oberliga
So the Rostockers stayed in the top division and accepted the now desolate season in terms of results. The squad was completely turned over again and set up with a view to the future. The only one who stayed in the contingent was midfielder Daniel Kremer (22), who had returned to the RFC in January 2024. About a dozen players moved up from the offspring, and the other places in the squad were occupied by a “casting”, which is the youngest of the league at the age of 21.8.
“The basic structure forms numerous players from the region who can thus gain experience for the next year. Of course that was born a little out of necessity. The opponents are currently simply qualitatively stronger, ”said Blanck about the result crisis, which led to the resignation of coach Jan Kistenmacher and his successor Jens Dowe. Both gave the lack of sporting development. “The team is fighting numerous structural challenges that make performance build up considerably,” explained box makers, for example.
Now it has to judge Blanck himself, who previously only worked as a trainer in the youth area. “We rely on an internal and reliable solution to have enough time to be able to build something sustainable,” the CEO Henry Karper told the “Nordkurier“. “Some players left us and that is understandable for us. The association moves closer together, in particular the cooperation between the men’s teams and the U19 is further intensified. ”
Even before the start of the season, the club boss had emphasized that the club “put back on healthy legs” and from then on wanted to put more on young players from their own offspring. “We are still in the process of driving back the structures that were set up two to three years ago,” Karper told the “Ostsee-Zeitung” at the time. But the club is doing well, emphasized Blanck. “At that time we spun off the first team and let everything run over the GmbH so that the club is outside.”
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The person responsible had not expected that the team would be so bad in the year of the 130th anniversary. “We knew that it would be a difficult season, but at that time we had hoped for one or the other point,” emphasized Blanck. Until the end of the season there should therefore still be one or two little sense of achievement. At least in the state cup of the RFC, the first two rounds survived before the eighth team SV Rogeez (1: 2) had to be painted. With a view to the former success season 2022/23, Blanck says today: “The successes were nice, but not sustainable.”