Opposition Check: SC Freiburg

Before Christian Streich hangs up the tactics board at the end of the season, let’s take a closer look at the Lilies‘ upcoming opponents before the Bundesliga duel on matchday 29 between SV Darmstadt 98 and SC Freiburg.

Juventus, Olympiacos Piraeus and West Ham United – football clubs that sound more like the opponents of FC Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund. But they were all teams that the sports club from Freiburg met in the Europa League in the last two seasons. Freiburg already played internationally in the 2013/14 season and met, among others, the eventual Europa League winners Sevilla FC in the preliminary round. But what was a huge surprise ten years ago now seems almost normal: SC Freiburg has put itself in a position to be seen as a contender for the European places every year.

This season and last season it ended in the round of 16 of the Europa League. While Freiburg failed last year against Juventus, this year West Ham was too strong. Will the next attempt follow next year? When you look at the Bundesliga table, it quickly becomes clear that the sports club could achieve its third European qualification in a row. Currently they have ninth place, but Hoffenheim are tied in seventh place. The fact that this seventh place will most likely be enough to qualify for international business this season plays into the Breisgau team’s hands. Maybe, depending on the outcome of the DFB Cup final, eighth place in the table could even be enough…

Meanwhile, Christian Streich was dissatisfied with himself and the team last weekend when the sports club suffered a 4-1 home defeat against Leipzig. “The boys did it badly and I did it badly too, in any case in the first half. (…) In the second half we saw that it would have been better. „Unfortunately we couldn’t show that, I’m very disappointed,“ said Streich, as usual.

The 58-year-old would like to see a significant improvement for the away game in Darmstadt. Before the Lilies‘ home game (April 14th/3:30pm) we took a closer look at the sports club in our weekly opponent check.

„Go vote! So that we can collect votes against this unspeakable, xenophobic and anti-guest policy from some parties.“ A public appeal for democracy. But not spoken by a democratic politician, as one might assume. No. Instead, this quote comes from a football coach. Someone who wears his heart on his sleeve and stands up for his values ​​away from the football field and also expresses them publicly. Christian Streich. The head coach of SC Freiburg.

The 58-year-old undoubtedly has outstanding qualities as a coach. In addition, his honest and open nature has given him a special standing, especially at press conferences. „We don’t have to make ourselves even sexier than we are, but we’re not completely unsexy. Well, I’m relatively unsexy now, I admit that. But the club and the structure are also a bit sexy,“ is one of many statements that will remain in mind even after Streich’s term in office. Because his era as head coach of SC Freiburg ends this summer.

The native of South Baden has been the coach of the first Freiburg team for over twelve years. But the love story between Streich and the SCF goes back much further: in the 1987/88 season he was active as a midfielder for the Breisgauer team in the 2nd Bundesliga. Streich returned to his old place of work in 1995, when he began coaching the A-youth team for Freiburg. The 58-year-old held this position until 2011, won the DFB Cup three times with the youth team and won the German A youth championship in 2008. Later national players such as Dennis Aogo and Oliver Baumann were part of his teams.

After he was also assistant coach for the first team, he took over the position of head coach at the beginning of 2012. Remarkable: Despite relegation to the 2nd Bundesliga, SCF stuck with its coach in 2015, who then managed to immediately achieve promotion. Promotion. Relegation. Fight to stay in the league. Battle for European business. Europe League. DFB Cup final. Christian Streich has experienced almost everything with his Freiburgers. Next Sunday he will be in charge of his 484th competitive game as coach for the SCF at the Merck Stadium at the Böllenfalltor. There will be another five games until the end of the season before he hands over the position of head coach to a younger one.

Julian Schuster. He will follow Christian Streich on the sidelines from summer 2024. The former midfielder played 219 competitive games for the sports club. The 38-year-old Schuster was, among other things, a player in the Bundesliga promotion in 2016, and ended his career two years later. Can he now shape a similar era on the sidelines at SC Freiburg…?

The people of Breisgau can always rely on one thing: their solidarity! Players like captain Christian Günther and Nicolas Höfler have been with the club for over ten years, and their own youth players like Noah Atubolu repeatedly make it into the Bundesliga team. The structure of the SCF seems to fit in very well with the city and region; everything seems very harmonious and familiar. So you hear again and again from player circles how good the cohesion is among each other. “We are a close-knit bunch. Everyone helps everyone, everyone fights for everyone. We get along very, very well. Maybe that’s our big secret,” said Italian international Vincenzo Grifo in an interview with Sport1.

Michael Gregoritsch was 15 years and 361 days old when he scored for the first time for SV Kapfenberg in the Austrian Bundesliga. A record that still stands today and may never be broken. But anyone who expects the now 29-year-old to get off to a complete flying start is wrong. He spent the first two years in the Landesliga, the fourth highest league in Austria. In 2011 the striker signed for Hoffenheim.

“It was completely normal for me to gain match practice as a young player in the second team, as was later the case in Hoffenheim and at St. Pauli,” the SC player once said in an interview with “Deichstube”. Gregoritsch experienced his real breakthrough in the 2014/15 season at VfL Bochum, when he impressed with eleven goals. After two years in Hamburg with HSV, the Austrian moved to Augsburg, where he had a total of 39 goal involvements. However, his time with in Bavaria was not entirely silent; in 2019 he was about to move to Bremen. “I just want to get away,” the attacker said at the time. But the move to the Weser fell through.

Instead of going far to the north, deep to the south. The striker has now arrived in Breisgau and is particularly enthusiastic about his current coach, Christian Streich. “You really don’t want to imagine what it would be like without him. Because somehow he just belongs to it – like cranberries to the schnitzel,“ Gregoritsch said with a laugh in an interview in January 2023 about the head coach’s possible departure. It is now clear that Streich will stop after the season. Streich certainly had a positive impact on the Austrian’s career; since the summer of 2022, the attacker has contributed 36 goals across all competitions.

What’s exciting, however, is that the 29-year-old wouldn’t describe himself as a regular player. “The coach once said: There are no regular players. “That’s why I’m not going to announce here that I see myself as a regular player,” he said in the “Deichstuben” interview. The fact that the players still feel comfortable at the sports club is mainly due to the club’s family environment. “It’s very family-like, very friendly. Here everyone works for everyone else without taking themselves too seriously. This is how success comes about.”