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SC Freiburg has to accept the loss of some strong professionals again before the new season – nevertheless everything seems solid and grown with the first Bundesliga opponent of VfB Stuttgart.
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Stuttgart / Freiburg – Nobody was surprised that at SC Freiburg in one of the first team meetings this summer everything went as usual. Coach Christian Streich, who has long been the political conscience of the Bundesliga, is also happy to be the grassroots democrats within the team (at least when no authoritarian ranting about poor performance is necessary) – and lets the players choose his captain. The veteran Christian Günter won the race in the voting booth after reading the ballot papers, his deputies are Nils Petersen and Vincenzo Grifo – and one can assume that the new leadership coalition, which has been on the field for years, will go through the season without major disputes will come.
It starts this Sunday (6.30 p.m.) with the first competitive game, the DFB Cup game at the third division team Waldhof Mannheim – and the next Saturday it’s down to business. Then the Baden-Württemberg state duel at VfB Stuttgart takes place on the first day of the Bundesliga, in which SC Freiburg on the one hand, after nine years without a win at VfB, hopes that everything will be different – but on the other hand wants to lay the foundation for everything to stay as it was .
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Because the goal for the new round is clear: after the sports club finished eighth last season and never had a double-digit position in the table, the Freiburg team want to have another good year without any relegation worries.
But as is usually the case with SC, after a strong season some of the strongest professionals go where they can make more money and take the famous next step. Coach Christian Streich therefore has to readjust his scaffolding again. As always, they suffer a little from the curse of their good deeds at the Dreisam. Making young, developable players better and then somehow having to compensate for their loss – that is the traditional Freiburg slogan.
The system is balanced
This summer left in regular goalkeeper Alexander Schwolow (for eight million euros to Hertha BSC) as well as Robin Koch (defense / for 13 million to Leeds United) and Luca Waldschmidt (attack / for 15 million to Benfica Lisbon), who had matured into national players at SC Support the club – and yet, in contrast to many other preseason, they don’t panic in Breisgau. Streich’s structure has lost a few pillars. But it still seems to be stable.
Because the prank system has long been balanced and well established on the pitch. Efficient and strong in combat, strong running and steady, that’s how the SC appeared in the preseason, and that’s how he wants to do it again with the majority of the eleven from the previous round.
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The sports club defeated top teams like RB Leipzig or Borussia Mönchengladbach – also thanks in part to excellent standards with famous shooters like Vincenzo Grifo, Jonathan Schmid or Christian Günter, who persevered during the week under the standard representative in the coaching team, ex-striker Florian Bruns work on their variants. In addition, Christian Streich was happy about “great progress in the short-passing game” – and he was now able to look forward to some newcomers in the summer to compensate for the departures.
That wasn’t necessary in goal, because the previous substitute keeper Mark Flekken has often represented Schwolow strongly, and there is great trust in the new number one from the Netherlands. Defender Keven Schlotterbeck, on the other hand, returned from his loan year at Union Berlin as a seasoned Bundesliga professional, in the central midfield the young Dutchman Guus Til (on loan from Spartak Moscow) is to shape the game in the future – and the powerful striker Ermedin Demirovic (came from FC Malaga ) Starting eleven potential.
Stable financial position
Incidentally, the newcomers will still be on the ball in the old Black Forest Stadium, at least in the first half of the season. The move to the new stadium in the north of Freiburg (capacity: 34,700 spectators), which is planned for the summer, has been postponed due to the pandemic; ideally, it should be the first competitive game next year.
One thing is clear: unlike the larger clubs in the league, the SC is increasingly dependent on audience income – since it is not yet possible to predict when they will be available again, the large transfer surpluses this summer are doing the club extremely well. It is also a fact that the SC is an all-round healthy club. Thanks to his traditionally rock solid economy and a number of transfer surpluses, he is financially stable, so he did not have to ask for a state guarantee or the like in the current crisis, and he did not send his employees on short-time work. The new stadium at the airport is financed, in the seasons 2017/18 and 2018/19 the SC made a profit of 18 million euros. It’s running at SC Freiburg – all that’s missing is the next carefree Bundesliga season.
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