SC Freiburg sweetened Christmas and the short winter break with a win against Leverkusen. It crowned an exceptional first half of the season for the Breisgau side.
Whether he was already dreaming of the Champions League, Christian Streich was asked after the win against Leverkusen, which moved Freiburg up to third place in the first-half table. “I sometimes dream that I’m late for training or that SC Freiburg are already playing, and I’m not on the bench, and then I’m god-awful when I wake up “, the SC coach replied, “that’s no joke”. Too sleepy, though, that hasn’t happened to him yet. The Sport-Club without Streich on the touchline has only been in two consecutive games in the past ten years, but then he was excused due to back problems.
Shortly before his anniversary at the end of December, he celebrated his 100th Bundesliga win with Sport-Club against the Werkself. “The number doesn’t mean that much to me, but the victory against a really good team,” said Streich. After Freiburg’s recent failure to reward themselves for their performances with just four points from the past six games, the SC coach had once again wished for a passionate performance from his team, who gave him this pre-Christmas gift. As he had demanded, “the energy was there from the first minute “, despite the English week. “It was a class performance from the team, extremely compact, willing and smart, in behaviour with and against the ball, not wild on it but very structured.” With a clear chance advantage of 7:2, SC earned the 2-1 against Bayer. “I believed the team could do it, and I wanted it badly,” Streich explained. Before the third game in the last week before the winter break, he said, he told the “young guys they have to get over the Sauhund, as they say in Baden. “
As a reward, Freiburg took over third place from Leverkusen – and with 29 points they scored more than ever before in a half-season under Streich. It was the perfect end to a very good first half of the season, in which the team only disappointed in terms of results at times, and conceded the fewest goals (16) with Bayern Munich. “It’s nice that we didn’t have a weak performance in 17 games, 20 to 30 minutes at the most,” said the 56-year-old, “we were very stable defensively, in the offensive we sometimes lacked quality. “
Streich nevertheless looks down with one eye
Even though they need to work on their chance-taking, the team played “a great first half of the season”. “But that is also necessary when you see how close everything is in the table,” he added. So despite the top position, Streich’s gaze is still downward, at least with one eye. He only wants to leave dreams of the Champions League to his players – if they don’t slack off in training and in the game, but continue to work as hard as they did in the first half of the season. “It motivated us that we could end up in a great place in the table,” said Vincenzo Grifo, who is Freiburg’s top scorer in the league with four goals and nine assists. This motivation will not diminish in the coming year.