Wuppertaler SV has been back in action since the winterbreak, and so far things at least seem to be moving in the right direction. (Officially, the club is known as “Wuppertaler SV Borussia, but only wankers refer to that name. And you’ll probably only hear club officials using that name, so you can draw your own conclusions…)
Obviously, when you get relegated from the 3.Liga and have fallen back into the 4th division Regionalliga West, the situation is pretty dire. And of course, the campaign so far has to be one of the worst in memory. The squad completely sucked in the first half, and indeed were in potential relegation zone. (But of course, this is a bit Monty-Pythonesque, because there will be no relegation this year. The DFB has decided to reorganize the the Regionalliga, and with all the Südwest clubs getting moved to their own division, basically everybody is assured of staying up.)
Things started looking up when the club fired coach Karsten Hutwelker, who meant well, but was completely unable to motivate the squad. Since then, the club has won a few matches, and indeed as climbed up into a semi-respectable 5th place. However, as you look at the table below, respect is relative…
Regionalliga West 2011-12
1 Sportfreunde Lotte 19 12 6 1 39:14 +25 42
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2 Borussia M'gladbach II 19 11 5 3 37:24 +13 38
3 Eintracht Trier 20 11 4 5 31:17 +14 37 *
4 1. FC Köln II 20 8 7 5 36:30 +6 31
5 WUPPERTALER SV 20 8 6 6 34:28 +6 30
6 Borussia Dortmund II 18 8 4 6 36:22 +14 28
7 Fortuna Köln (N) 20 7 6 7 28:32 -4 27
8 1. FSV Mainz 05 II 21 7 5 9 30:27 +3 26 *
9 1. FC Kaiserslautern II 19 6 8 5 30:30 0 26 *
10 SC Wiedenbrück 2000 19 7 5 7 22:26 -4 26
11 SC Verl 19 7 3 9 22:25 -3 24
12 Rot-Weiss Essen (N) 20 7 3 10 27:34 -7 24
13 FC Schalke 04 II 19 7 3 9 25:34 -9 24
14 VfL Bochum II 20 6 6 8 24:34 -10 24
15 SV Elversberg 19 5 6 8 19:27 -8 21 *
16 SC Idar-Oberstein (N) 19 5 5 9 21:37 -16 20 *
17 Fortuna Düsseldorf II 19 3 10 6 22:25 -3 19
18 Bayer Leverkusen II 19 3 8 8 21:27 -6 17
19 TuS Koblenz (A) 19 1 10 8 13:24 -11 11 *
* - indicates south-west club
As you can see, WSV has zero chance of getting promoted. Instead that worthless club Lotte is running away with the league. (And you thought I was just referring to the Chiba-Lotte Orions of the Japan Pacific Baseball League. Or the Korean chaebol…). WSV really is just playing out the season, trying not to suck too much. Fat chance…
Since the league restarted last week, many of the matches in the lower divisions have been postponed due to the weather. However, WSV has managed to get their matches played. The opener was a 1-0 win over Fortuna Köln (goal by Moosmayer) at the Zoo-Stadion, with a massive crowd of 1,385 fans. Then today WSV travelled and came away with a 2-1 win over FSV Mainz II. Schlieter and Zieba scored the goals (Hey, even I have never heard of them), so now WSV is on an upward trend…
The current squad is not bad from a 4th division standpoint:
Matches Goals Valuation (euros)
Goalkeepers
(AUT) Klafflsberger, Martin ? - - ?
Samulewicz, Sascha 21.03.1986 7 0 150,000
Semmler, Christoph 03.03.1980 10 0 200,000
Sube, Bastian 09.01.1992 3 0 75,000
Defenders
Fleßers, Robert 11.02.1987 14 1 200,000
Flottmann, Daniel 06.08.1984 19 1 225,000
Herzenbruch, Felix 08.08.1992 11 0 50,000
Lorenz, Stefan 19.09.1981 5 0 175,000
(BEL) Moosmayer, Tom 01.10.1979 18 4 200,000
Schlieter, Thomas 28.01.1981 20 3 350,000
van den Bergh, Lukas 07.09.1988 2 0 100,000
Zimmermann, Jörn 09.02.1992 9 0 50,000
Midfield
(JPN) Asaeda, Ken 27.07.1983 14 1 250,000
Baltes, Benjamin 30.03.1984 11 0 150,000
Brinkmann, Dennis 22.11.1978 2 0 250,000
(MOR) El Hammouchi, Rachid 12.09.1981 16 0 125,000
Hammes, Jan 02.02.1985 - - ?
Landers, Marcel 24.08.1984 19 0 250,000
Matern, Nico 27.11.1992 1 0 25,000
Meier, Jan-Steffen 30.05.1992 17 0 50,000
Weikl, Björn 09.02.1977 - - 100,000
(POL) Zieba, Maciej 24.01.1987 15 3 75,000
Attack
Abelski, Ben 19.09.1982 11 1 150,000
(ALB) Kastrati, Bekim 25.03.1979 10 1 125,000
Knappmann, Christian 19.03.1981 20 16 250,000
Quotschalla, Marco 25.07.1988 2 0 125,000
Overall, according to Transfermarkt, (http://www.transfermarkt.de), the squad is valued around 3.7 million euros, with an average of about 140,000. This puts WSV near the top of the division, clearly under performing.
The only player who has been doing well is forward Christian Knappmann, who leads all the Regionalliga with 16 goals. He’s played most of his career in the 3rd-4th level, scoring 86 times in 264 matches. Perhaps this is his swan song. The best known player is Albanian journeyman Bekim Kastrati, who had a cup of tea with M’gladbach in the Bundesliga 2005/06 and was capped by Albania twice. (Although actually I think he was born in Kosovo). He’s bounced around mostly in the 3rd division, where he’s scored the bulk of his 50 goals (140 matches) in Germany. He was brought in to be the big striker a couple of years ago, but has largely flopped. Experienced defender Tom Schlieter has 80 2.Liga matches with Oberhausen, and Tom Moosmayer a glass of beer at that level too.