Regionalliga Northeast: BFC Dynamo – champions of missed chances

The stadium roared like an underground ocean. But instead of meter-high waves, desperate cries from the BFC fans crashed onto the fronts of houses in Hohenschönhausen: suffering as far as the eye could see, immeasurable pain and deep emptiness in the faces of people whose hair had turned gray during the regional league game against Rot-Weiß Erfurt.

What had happened on that cold Friday night when relentless rain lashed the heads of the wine-red and whites, who had previously believed unwaveringly in promotion, and the evil spirits of football danced mockingly in circles in the sports forum?

Ballhaus East

Imago/Matthias Koch

Frank Willmann looks at the football between Leipzig, Łódź and Ljubljana.

The Berliners actually had to accept the visitors’ 2-2 equalizer in the penultimate minute. Through exhausted Erfurters who haven’t known how to win for twelve games! Who had already been announced that they would be out of Thuringian football, for whom the job center was waiting, training as a florist perhaps, or a position in Montenegro’s or Moldova’s second league? They left their trainer at home, why should he move his bones when RWE no longer had anything to do with it?

Football is unfathomable, it gives joy or pain, for BFC Dynamo it was myocardial infarction on this Friday night. And now: Only three match days left until the end of the season in the Regionalliga Nordost – and leaders Energie Cottbus have eaten into a lead: two points on Greifswald, now seven points on the BFC, who are chilling in third place.

Everything speaks in favor of the Cottbus team, who stormed through the Karl Liebknecht Stadium like the Furies and won 3-0 at arch-rivals Babelsberg. Now Cottbus travels to the BFC. The Berliners’ form curve is pointing downwards. The game will decide the championship fight in the fourth division. The spectators also see it this way: the sports forum will be sold out.

The regional league champions are promoted to the 3rd league – the longed-for goal of the BFC, which has always been at the top this season. Recently it seemed as if coach Dirk Kuhnert had lost access to the team. In press conferences that were difficult to bear, he struggled for words and offered platitudes when it came to describing the inner life of his team. Where it is important to pamper the ball kickers in wine red and white like a mild father who, after the days of thunder, rolls up his sleeves and looks ahead.

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The evil animal reigns in Cottbus: trainer Pele Wollitz – always ready to love, caress and, if necessary, punish his own brood. The alternative to Kuhnert’s pointed cap. When Wollitz berserks down the line, the God of Confidence reigns. Wollitz makes the difference, alongside the slightly larger Cottbus wallet. Most recently he had to serve a suspension on the team bus.

On May 4th he will give nasty scratches on the sidelines, insult him disgustingly, curse the referee, hate the Berlin spectators and be a rock in the surf for his players. But the great thing about football is that things tend to turn out differently than expected.