The small SC Freiburg is in the final of the Europa League. The football fairy tale from Breisgau tells a great story: miracles are possible. Even without a lot of money.
Big football lives somewhere else. Even after SC Freiburg reached the final of the Europa League. His dazzling doorbell signs can be found in Paris, Madrid, London, Liverpool and Manchester. Where money is printed with the biggest sport in the world.
The fairy tale that was written late on Thursday evening in tranquil Freiburg doesn’t change that. But occasionally, in very specific constellations, big football visits places where it is not normally at home. And then it becomes clear: everything is possible. Money likes to score goals. And it usually wins titles too. And yet: Solid work and willingness to sacrifice can tell fairy tales.
Capital does not rule in tranquil Freiburg. The man from Baden doesn’t speculate wildly on the stock market, he builds a house. The football miracle in the southwest is based on reason, modesty, humility, trust and consistency. The esprit of coaching legend Christian Streich and the solid businessmanship of the club’s management turned an elevator club that shuttled back and forth between the Bundesliga and League Two into a solid member of the upper house of football in Germany.
In Freiburg they build structures and stars
Young players came, were trained and refined and sold on for good money. The club used the income to build a functioning infrastructure: a beautiful stadium, a football school as a training ground for squads, and a savings bank for necessary purchases. Freiburg established itself in the Bundesliga, step by step. And said “hello” more and more regularly on the European football stage.
When the guru Streich retired to his football-philosophical retirement, Breisgau did not hire an external star coach, but instead gave the keys to the house to a Streich student from within their own ranks. Julian Schuster, a nobody outside the city limits, but a figure of integration within the club, slipped seemingly effortlessly into the great Christian’s shoes. Not a modern laptop trainer, but a presenter with the smell of a stable, a meticulous worker, “one of them”, as they say in Freiburg.
He continued what had become successful under Streich: solid team building. “We know who we are,” the newcomer sighed blissfully into the microphones after reaching the final. Under his leadership, the young Swiss Johan Manzambi, who hardly anyone knew two years ago, grew into a jewel of European football. Goalkeeper Noah Atubolu, who grew up in Freiburg’s troubled Weingarten district, turned out to be one of Germany’s greatest goalkeeping talents. In Denmark, the Freiburg team found the bustling Japanese Yuito Suzuki, from Frankfurt they brought in the Croatian striker Igor Matanovič, who had failed there, and from Bremen they brought in the midfield worker Maximilian Eggestein.
Schuster and his team put together these rough diamonds together with the 2014 world champion Matthias Ginter, who returned to his hometown from Dortmund. With the tireless homegrown Christian Günter, who speaks a dialect almost as wonderfully as Streich himself and has never played anywhere else than in Freiburg. With the magic foot Vincenzo Grifo, who wasn’t happy in Hoffenheim and Gladbach, but always worked in Freiburg.