In 2006 the SC Freiburg youth team won the first of six titles, and many of the team’s players went on to become professionals. The captain of the team is today’s BZ editor Max Schuler. A review.
He will never train professionals. This sentence stuck in one of the many speeches that the then A youth coach Christian Streich gave to the team that brought the DFB Cup to Breisgau for the first time in 2006. At the time, Streich was passionate about youth work at SC Freiburg, which also brought him into conflict with the management level at the time, which he felt offered too few youngsters a chance. Developing young people, on and off the field, that was his credo. He wanted nothing to do with supposedly overpaid, arrogant professionals. And he was able to motivate teams right up to the top of the tunnel: “After the speeches you wanted to get out and tear down the walls,” remembers then-player Felix Roth.
“After the speeches you wanted to go out and tear down the walls.” At that time, Felix Roth Streich formed a team of ambitious chaotic and A-level high school graduates who were screened for years and had to assert themselves in the South Baden national teams and in the football school. He warned them about the tower in which some careers were ruined, and he meant the Freiburg train station disco Kagan. Streich looked disdainfully at some dubious player advisors, whom he gave names from the animal world. He also enjoyed respect from the boys, who liked to mock other coaches behind their backs. But if someone deliberately didn’t get it and got in the way, Streich would let crosses hit him for so long that he himself hammered them into the corner with a side pull – and then suffered from back pain for a week. Stupid talk on the square fell silent – even if some people attested him a certain madness after such actions.
Luckily, Streich was wrong about one thing
But Streich was not a crowbar coach. With young players who would rather have played Fifa in front of the Playstation and wanted to play DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” at the same time, he attended film documentaries about the dance teacher Royston Maldoom in the Friedrichsbau. He explained German history to them at the Holocaust memorial. The son of a butcher did yoga in training before it was part of the big city lifestyle. Mostly he made the right sporting decisions, even if some judgments were harsh for some players and let dreams burst.
Success: SC Freiburg’s A youth team wins the DFB Cup for the first time
Today he is immensely valued by fellow coaches and players for his understanding of football and his attitude to social and socio-political issues. Even as a youth coach, he bled into the players not to dream of millions, but to leave a decent tip for the cleaning staff in the hotel.
But SC Freiburg is fortunate to be wrong about one thing. Streich has been training professionals for more than ten years. The current team does not attract attention with arrogance. Even if, of course, expensive cars are also parked next to the training ground and the SC …
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