Despite a defeat, SC Freiburg moves straight into the round of 16 of the Europa League without going through the intermediate round.
At the end of the league phase, coach Julian Schuster’s team lost 0-1 (0-0) at OSC Lille. The result was still enough to maintain a place among the top eight teams. A penalty from Olivier Giroud (90+2) sealed the late defeat.
Even before kick-off, it was clear that one point would be enough for the Bundesliga club to skip the playoffs and thus gain two weeks off. Given the triple pressure of the league, Europa League and DFB Cup, it was understandable that the guests chose a defensive approach.
However, this was so defensive that they remained completely harmless throughout the entire game. But Lille didn’t act much more forcefully out of the game – despite having the majority in the final phase after the red card for Maximilian Eggestein (74th). Due to the results of the competition, the defeat had no consequences.
Lille is still winless this calendar year
The poor northern French team went into the encounter against the seventh-place team in the Bundesliga with five competitive defeats in a row. Nevertheless, Schuster had warned against the hosts – especially against former world champion and veteran Giroud.
“You can’t just look at the results, but also the games,” said the coach, referring, among other things, to the 3-0 loss to Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain. “They also got into the game well against PSG. I would rate it as the most difficult task for us in the league phase.”
Freiburg is low
The 40-year-old turned out to be right with his assumption, even though the actual target player, Giroud, was not in the starting line-up. Lille relied on fast, agile attackers and posed a threat at times. Freiburg, on the other hand, stood deep and didn’t come up with a single offensive action in the first half. However, SC goalkeeper Noah Atubolu wasn’t really challenged either.
“If you don’t do that well with the ball, then you have to at least defend it to the end,” said sports director Jochen Saier, who was hoping for an improvement in an interview on RTL+ during the half-time break: “One would hope that we would get a little better with the ball.”
Game more open after the restart
The Freiburg team followed their words with actions, at least for a short time: Shortly after the restart, however, Junior Adamu initially lacked the speed of action (51.). Shortly before his substitution, he completely missed the ball in front of the Lille goal (57′). On the other side, Matias Fernandez-Pardo failed alone in front of Atubolu, who couldn’t be outwitted by a lob (64′).
The game was now a little more fast-paced. Atubolu had more to do until the final whistle, but even after Eggestein’s dismissal, the Lille attackers were only able to overcome Giroud’s penalty in stoppage time.
