fFor a brief moment late on Saturday afternoon, Christian Günter indulged in a crazy fantasy, an excursion into the actually unthinkable. “If I’m up there on the fourth thirtieth, then I probably wouldn’t see me here now,” the SC Freiburg captain replied to a journalist who, after the sports club’s 3-2 victory in Leverkusen, pushed the successful Baden team to the top of the Bundesliga table had addressed.
With this answer, Günter actually wanted to point out that only five games have been played and the table is therefore not very informative. “We can still classify everything well,” he said. But as little as the tableau may reveal about the title chances of Freiburg, Dortmund, Munich and 1. FC Union, the effect of this start of the season on Freiburg’s well-being is just as great.
It is only the second time in the club’s history that SC are top of the Bundesliga table, never before so late in the season, and that helps the Freiburgers in their eternal struggle with this Baden fear that their impressive football project could suddenly fall apart. “We want to stay in the league and play good games in the European Cup in a year when we’re playing in the European Cup,” said coach Christian Streich, describing the goals for the coming months.
Joy in the Freiburg game
This modesty has a lot to do with an old trauma. When the SC last played in the group stage of the Europa League in 2013, the team crashed in the Bundesliga, Streich was badly hit, which was also physically visible. That experience still runs deep. The twelve points already collected give the coach and his team a pleasant feeling of light-heartedness.
In Leverkusen, it was easy to see the joy with which Freiburg looked ahead to their game against Azerbaijani club Qarabag Agdam on Thursday, while a few meters away, Leverkusen were rather cheerless about their long-awaited return to the Champions League. At the start, the factory club meets FC Brugge in Belgium. “Wednesday is a new game, a new competition, we have to continue,” said sports director Simon Rolfes and defended himself against an erupting coaching discussion.
Leverkusen coach Gerardo Seoane had to accept another defeat with his team.
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Image: AFP
Gerardo Seoane has “full support”. Freiburg, on the other hand, are quite well protected from the crisis that has hit Leverkusen thanks to their point cushion. In terms of football, they are only half satisfied despite the unique table picture.
The club is ahead of Borussia Dortmund and FC Bayern, but they haven’t consistently played like a top team. The 4-0 win in Augsburg on Matchday 1 could have gone in a completely different direction in the first half, the 1-0 victories against Bochum and in Stuttgart were helped by good runs, and the first half in Leverkusen was weak. “I can classify the games, we do some things well and other things not so well,” said Streich. “We can get four goals today, we had a good goalkeeper, good central defenders and we were lucky.” In addition to remarkable efficiency.
Dealing with dead balls
In Leverkusen, the new league leaders had hardly any chances to score, the 1:1 by Matthias Ginter (48th) and Ritsu Doan’s 2:3 (72nd) came from corner kicks, and the 1:2 by Michael Gregoritsch (51st) was a bad mistake by Leverkusener Edmond Tapsoba. So they were not even dependent on consistently good football on their way to the top of the table, because they have this very special strength that has been meticulously cultivated over the years: Seven of the twelve Freiburg competitive goals in the course of the season so far have come from set pieces, which the assistant coach Lars Voßler and Florian Bruns, who are constantly developing new ideas for dealing with dead balls.
Co-trainer Lars Voßler (right) after the game with Christian Streich.
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Image: AFP
“They do it outstandingly,” said Streich, but also pointed out the role of the players: “It helps that many have been with us for years and have a good coordination. They can simply make good decisions when they are stressed out on the pitch.” The fact that the goals on the Rhine were all scored by newcomers speaks for the team’s great ability to integrate.
In the end, they were only sad about the injury of Roland Sallai, who sustained a fracture of the floor of his eye during an unfortunate duel with Jonathan Tah and will be out indefinitely. But the squad has a breadth that has never been seen at the sports club, which can be seen not least in the reserve team.
Lukas Kübler, Daniel Kofi-Kyereh and Merlin Röhl, who are permanent members of the Bundesliga team, played there on Saturday to gain match practice, to contribute to the 1-0 win against Ingolstadt and to a promotion place. It is a remarkable coincidence that the reserve team is in better shape than ever.
