Rot Weiss Ahlen is once again looking for a new coach. Sports director Joachim Krug has known this procedure for decades and denies that RWA would not find anyone due to the sporting problems. But there is a little back door.
Red Lantern: Rot Weiss Ahlen is ankle-deep in the relegation swamp of the Regionalliga West.
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Actually he should do it. As it has been since time immemorial. He probably no longer knows how many trainer Joachim Krug has looked for and hired – with interruptions – at LR and RW Ahlen as manager and sporting director since 1992. The 68-year-old is now the sports director and he is leaving the search for a coach for Daniel Berlinski’s successor to his heir. Well, most of it anyway. “I gave Orhan Özkara around 25 names that I know and that are free, so I have done my duty for the time being,” the veteran Krug worked through his memory of numbers. And otherwise wants to stay out of it, which is exactly what the manager and current interim coach Özkara wants.
A maximum of suggestions were tolerated when putting together the team; the 43-year-old preferred to conduct final discussions alone. Now he can have it almost exactly the same again. Because the names are supplied to Özkara, he is allowed to choose them himself. He just doesn’t decide. “Orhan Özkara does the operational business and leads the preliminary discussions. But we on the board still make the decisions,” says Krug, making the priorities clear.
With Özkara against Düsseldorf II
And they want to clarify that very quickly. Özkara will once again lead the all-important basement duel against Fortuna Düsseldorf II as interim coach, and then he will be introduced, the new one. Krug knows the timetable there too: “Orhan is already holding three or four discussions with the closest circle of candidates this week. Then he will report to us and we want to decide together at the beginning of next week,” says Krug, and has one last option: “Although – if we can’t get along with the applicants – it’s not yet off the table that Orhan could continue until the winter break.” But what would only happen if no agreement was reached; Rather unlikely, because despite the precarious situation and a worse crisis than last season, there seem to be enough brave applicants. “We get offers of trainers from all sides – from themselves, from the advisor, from grandma and grandpa, oh, it’s always the same,” Krug can hardly be surprised.
But he vehemently denies that the new man on the bench should receive compensation rather than a salary. “Under Özkara’s direction we had at least one ‘Oberhausen performance’,” he recalls the penultimate, good 0-0 draw. “If we keep up with this performance against Düsseldorf, they can be beaten. Stay in touch until the winter break and then maybe make some adjustments to the personnel. I’m sticking with it: the squad is capable of staying in class.” With this optimism, every coach would like to work with RW Ahlen. And with Krug anyway. Because he got most of them. But almost never thrown out. Others were happy to take that over.
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