OstDeutscher Sieg | Part 12 | An Opportunity To Develop

Five years into his OstDeutscher Sieg challenge to lead an East German club to Bundesliga glory, Ruprecht Prusseit had just enjoyed his second-best season as a Football Manager. A successful summer rebuild had transformed the fortunes of 1. FC Lok Stendal from relegation favourites to a solid top-half finish.

But finances at the club weren’t great, so Prusseit was hopeful his efforts would catch the attention of a more established East German side in the summer of 2027. To further that cause, he submitted applications for vacant roles at third-tier Dynamo Dresden and fourth-tier Hansa Rostock II but wasn’t holding his breath based on previous experiences.

But this time, Rostock II did respond positively, offering the Dresden-born manager an interview and swiftly offering him the job. Prusseit had some reservations about managing a B team, so delayed for a week for any potential interest from his hometown club. But, for a third time in a year, Dynamo turned him down without even offering an interview so Prusseit accepted the Rostock offer.

Ruprecht Prusseit was the new Manager of Hansa Rostock II!

Who Are Hansa Rostock II?

Hansa Rostock II is the semi-professional second team of second-tier side Hansa Rostock, one of the most successful teams from East Germany. The first team has won five East German titles and won 2. Bundesliga in 1995 but, of course, the second team can’t compete in the same league. So Rostock II compete in the fourth tier Regionalliga Nordost.

Given he was managing a B team, Prusseit had less control over the club than he’d enjoyed with Dessau and Stendal. For example, he wasn’t able to sell players he didn’t want and had no transfer budget to buy players. But there was no doubt it offered a significant step up in player quality and standard of club. So Prusseit saw this as an opportunity to further increase his stock and raise awareness of his managerial skills, which was immediately boosted by his new board accepting his request to study for his National A Licence.

Prusseit’s new club play at the 5,000-capacity Volksstadion and has good training facilities courtesy of the first team. And the new board have lofty expectations, looking for him to finish in the top four of Regionalliga Nordost.

An example of the challenges facing Prusseit in his new role was his best player Blaz Jelic-Balta, who was considered the fourth-best player in the division, being called up to the first team. While his two best midfielders and his best left-back were loaned out to other clubs.

Of the players remaining, the pick of the bunch are attacking midfielders Kevin Stark, Melvin Kaminski, Jan-Lukas Franke and Chilohem Onuoha, 16-year-old right-back Christian Jänicke and 18-year-old Alexander Schumacher, who needs to work on his 4 finishing. But another player keeping an eye on in the future is exciting 15-year-old midfielder Nico Geppert.

Having assessed the players available to him, Prusseit initially settled on a fairly standard 4-3-3 formation:

Prusseit’s First Taste Of Tier Four

Rostock II are well-fancied to perform in Regionalliga, predicted to finish 3rd with odds of 12/1 to win the division. Only the league winners get promoted and recently relegated Dynamo Dresden are favorites at 3/10 with another East German side Chemnitzer at 11/1. And the league is packed with OstDeutscher Sieg sides, with nine of the 17 teams located in the region.

Prusseit’s first match in the German tier four was one of many East German rival clashes as they welcomed Chemie Leipzig in the Friday night curtain raiser. And they started well with a Schumacher brace and a late third by Onuoah. A big game followed as they went to title favourites Dynamo, to whom Prusseit felt he had a point to prove after multiple rejections. And he came close to it with a narrow 3-2 defeat thanks to Onuoah scoring a late brace off the bench.

That inspired Prusseit to switch to a 4-2-4 to shoehorn Onuoah into the team as a deep-lying forward, which worked excellently in a 4-0 win at home to Reinickendorf led by a Schumacher hat-trick. A run of five successive wins followed before a 2-2 at fellow East German side Hallescher.

That was part of a 10-game undefeated streak, including another Schumacher hat-trick in a 4-1 home thumping of Plauen, who won the division Prusseit managed in last season. They backed that up with another 4-1 win at Berliner AK with braces by Schumacher and Stark, which moved them just three points behind Dynamo with a game in hand. But they kicked on a level as Onuoha bagged a new club record four-goal haul and Stark got an assist hat-trick in a 6-2 hammering of managerless Berlin FC Dynamo.

Rostock II maintained their stellar form as they went to Chemnitzer and late goals by midfielder Fritz Fuchs and Onuoah nicked a 2-0 win. Then a trip to Rot-Weiß Erfurt in their game in hand saw them ease to a 3-0 victory.

That took Rostock II to the top of Regionalliga Nordorst for the first time at the halfway mark of the campaign, having only dropped points in two games. The strikeforce of Onuoah and Schumacher have taken the league by storm with a shared 29 goals, with Onuoah leading the way with 15. While Stark tops the assists chart with 10 followed by Kaminski with seven and goalkeeper Fabian Eutinger has kept the most clean sheets (9).