Offensive player Roland Sallai needs to be more convincing in training and substitutions to get another chance from the start at SC Freiburg. His next opportunity comes today in the away game at Union Berlin (20.30).
Only half of Freiburg’s 26 goals so far have been scored by attacking players. And even though coach Christian Streich expects all players to be capable of scoring, regardless of position, he would like to see more goals from the strikers: “We have left too many chances out of the game.” That was especially true recently in the games against Frankfurt (0:2) and in Bochum (1:2), which Sport-Club lost despite a good performance.
Where is the former dynamism, aggressiveness and goal-scoring ability?
Last season Roland Sallai was one of SC Freiburg’s top scorers with eight goals and six assists. This season, the Hungarian joins the ranks of SC offensive players who, for a variety of reasons, have collected only a few scorer points. He has made twelve appearances, of which he was only in the starting eleven four times, from the second to the fifth matchday. He scored a goal in the home win against Dortmund (2:1) and provided an assist in the win in Stuttgart (3:2). In mid-October, the 24-year-old had to be substituted in the home match against Leipzig (1:1) with a knee injury, missed three games after that and has had to make do with the wild card role ever since. But even when he has been substituted, he has not been able to bring his former dynamism, aggressiveness and goal-scoring ability onto the pitch.
Streich blames this not only on the injury absence, but also on the aftermath of the summer. “Hungary played very defensively at the European Championships, and Roland worked everything off up front against the big teams, and he did well,” the SC coach explained. Now, he said, he has to “assess situations realistically” and it’s a matter of “not only being committed but also training really well” for him and other current reserves, otherwise you don’t change a team that is actually playing quite well so quickly. If the performances in the four defeats in the past five games had not been right either, he would have made more changes in personnel.
“He has to manage to come in, 20 to 30 minutes, then he has to focus on the time he has to show the coach, I’m fully there,” Streich said, referring to that too not just Sallai, “then you think about whether you let him play from the start.” In principle, however, he said, it was anything but a flaw to sit on the bench at Freiburg.
Schade has his nose in front
On the contrary: “We have become better across the board now, which means that even if you don’t play sometimes, you are still a really good player,” the SC coach stressed. In addition, young players would put pressure on the team, of whom he named Kevin Schade in particular, who had earned his appearances – and most recently had the edge over Sallai.
