In the coverage of SC Freiburg’s dream of their first DFB Cup triumph, the fact that coach Christian Streich is already Germany’s most successful cup final ground hopper has gone unnoticed. Groundhoppers collect stadium visits like other people collect stamps, and Streich has already made it to the final three times in three different stadiums in the greater Berlin area and has also won the DFB Cup each time. In 2006 in the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark, in 2009 in the Karl-Liebknecht-Stadion in Potsdam and in 2011 in the ‘Stadion auf dem Felsenplatz’ next to the Olympic Stadium, he led the respective Freiburg A youth team to the cup triumph as U19 coach.
In the Olympic Stadium itself, however, Streich has never been in the final, just as no professional team from Freiburg has made it into the grand final so far. In this respect, the 2-1 victory in the quarter-finals at VfL Bochum was something special for Streich, especially since the highly emotional winning goal came 45 seconds before the end of extra time. He was asked afterwards whether he and his team would like to book himself and his team into a lucky hotel in Berlin that he might already know, and he answered truthfully that you first had to win the semi-finals in mid-April. The draw is on Sunday evening in the sports show.
Streich, 56, made no secret of his exuberance on Wednesday evening. After the final whistle, he jumped beaming across the lawn of the Ruhr Stadium and later followed the rhythmically formulated request of the Freiburg supporters to appear in front of the fan block, “because I was well brought up and didn’t want to be rude”. In the interview in front of the TV cameras, on the other hand, he allowed himself the fun of appearing quite sober and answering the expectant question about his emotional state in an exaggeratedly factual manner: “I’m satisfied.” When the Sky reporter objected that you couldn’t see his facial expressions, Streich ironically replied: “How should I look? Smile? Ah, okay, then I’ll smile.”
This is the special Streichian humor. A coach who, in his eleventh year, is having the best season so far with his SC Freiburg, who could qualify for the Champions League and is in the cup semi-finals for the first time in nine years, pretends that he has to wring a smile out of himself with laconic comments . He must have laughed himself to death from sheer enthusiasm.
“If only he had just kicked the ball out of the stadium in that scene”
This year, the first cup triumph in the club’s history seems realistic for Freiburg, and next Saturday they are guests in the Bundesliga at RB Leipzig and could move up to fourth place with a win, which entitles them to participate in the Champions League at the end of the season. However, at his own discretion, Streich does not dream of the lucrative European master class. “I dream of other things,” he says soberly again and says about the remaining season program: “We’re in the semifinals and already have so many points in the championship that we don’t have to worry – it can go on like this.”
Reaching the semi-finals of the cup would have meant just as much to VfL Bochum, especially since they had the better chances to score in extra time. It has been 34 years since a side packed with all sorts of club legends made it to the semi-finals in 1988 and then defeated Hamburger SV to the final, where they lost to Eintracht Frankfurt. The whole stadium was already expecting penalties on Wednesday evening when the young Bochum central defender Maxim Leitsch made a fatally unsuccessful back pass to the goalkeeper in the 120th minute, which Freiburg’s Roland Sallai used to score the winning goal.
Roland Sallai scored the goal for Freiburg just seconds before the end of the 120 minutes.
(Photo: Ina Fassbender/AFP)
“If only he had just kicked the ball out of the stadium in this scene,” VfL coach Thomas Reis lamented afterwards, but promised, like the players, not to blame Leitsch for it. Striker Sebastian Polter, scorer of Bochum’s 1-1 equalizer (64th) after Nils Petersen’s 1-0 lead (51st), showed himself to be a master of positive thinking when he said: “We can handle it as a team ; that only makes us stronger as a team.” This would be beneficial for the Ruhrpott footballers on Saturday if they could take a big step towards staying up in the league with three points against bottom-placed Greuther Fürth.
Freiburg, who have won three competitive games in a row, are now surfing their wave of success to Leipzig, where the hosts have won four competitive games in a row. These are the best prerequisites for a top game. In Bochum they were able to prove impressively that Freiburg have good nerves at the moment.