WSV is back…sort of

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
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 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.

 

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