Sports Weekly all-media reporter Huang Sijun
Here's a news article I wrote about 10 years ago today on the website "German Football Online":
Bundesliga half-time deputy squad leader Freiburg was in complete chaos on Thursday (29 December), with the club supporting manager Marcus Sorge to put five players, including captain Butcher, on a purge list a few days ago, only to suddenly announce Sorge's dismissal. Sorge, who only succeeded Mr. Duterte in charge of Freiburg this summer, became the fourth Bundesliga manager to be laid off this season, succeeded by assistant coach Christian Streishi.
The 46-year-old Sorge previously coached Freiburg's second team and has taken over from Mr. Duterte, who moved to Bayer Leverkusen, to the professional team this season. With the team basically retaining last season's squad and adding players such as Dembele, Ferrati and Hinkel, Freiburg performed poorly in the first half of the Bundesliga, only winning 3, drawing 4 and losing 10 at the bottom of the rankings, and 39 goals conceded were also the worst in the league, and Sorge could not blame.
Ten years ago, Streicht succeeded Sorge, the current assistant coach of the German team, as the head coach of the freiburg professional team.
This was the first time in Freiburg's Bundesliga history that he would be relieved of his employer coach, and the team was also in danger of being relegated for the first time in the post-Volker Fink era (manager from 1991 to 2007). After the first half of the tournament mission, Sorge announced the inclusion of Butcher, Bastians, Niku, Takaaki Yano and Zaltz in the purge list, and immediately terminated the contract with Abd Sadki, who violated the team's discipline. But as Sorge loses his coaching mark, the fate of Butcher and five other players may change immediately. A few days ago, Butcher had declined the invitation of his former owner Karlsruhe.
According to the Kickers website, Sorge's dismissal was clearly the result of the vast majority of players on the team questioning his tactical level. The Freiburg team was dissatisfied with Sorge's training content, game video analysis methods and lack of tactical literacy. According to the plan, Freiburg will regroup on January 2 next year, and two days later it will go to Rota in Andalusia, Spain, for training. After Sorge left class, assistant professor Streiich was promoted to number one. Sporting director Dufner said: "We decided to choose Streishi instead of looking for external solutions because he was familiar with the team. Prior to assisting Sorge this season, Streicht was manager of freiburg under the U19 team and led the team to a national championship in 2008.
The fledgling Genter struck a blow to help Freiburg beat Augsburg 1-0 on His Streich debut.
When I wrote this story 10 years ago, I wasn't very clear about who Streich really was, and like many people, I suspected that he was just a transitional plan for Freiburg, which was most likely relegated by the end of that season. outcome? It was under the leadership of this unknown "child king" that Freiburg achieved 7 wins, 6 draws and 4 losses in the second half (ranked 7th in the second half), completed the relegation task in the first 2 rounds, and ended the season in 12th place.
10 years on, we don't remember exactly how Freiburg came back to life that season, but we must remember Streiich, because he still sits in the managerial position in Freiburg. Today, he is the eighth manager in Bundesliga history to coach the same team for 10 consecutive years or more.
Streij's predecessors
At the forefront of this list is the aforementioned Falk Fink, who coached Freiburg for 5,843 consecutive days, or 16 years. Ranked 2nd and 3rd were two of Werder Bremen's meritorious coaches, Otto Rehagel and his disciple Thomas Schaff, who taught for 5,202 consecutive days (2 April 1981 to 30 June 1995) and 5,119 days (10 May 1999 to 15 May 2013).
Falk Fink coached Freiburg for 16 consecutive years and led the team to a historic promotion to the Bundesliga.
Straussch was preceded by Winfried Schaefer (formerly translated as "Shaffer"), Henness Weissweiler, Eduard Gaele and Tolsten Lieberknecht, who successively coached Karlsruhe (4,285 days from 1 July 1986 to 25 March 1998), Mönchengladbach (4,081 days from 27 April 1964 to 30 June 1975), and Cottbus (1 July 1994 to 23 November 2004). , 3798 days in total) and Brunswick (May 12, 2008 to June 30, 2018, 3701 days) for more than 10 years.
It should be added that the coaches on this "Bundesliga 10-year list" have not been limited to the Bundesliga consecutive coaching. When Fink first joined Freiburg, the team was still in the Bundesliga South (at that time the Bundesliga was divided into two divisions, north and south). It took two years for Fink to lead the team to a historic promotion to the Bundesliga. Freiburg has since been relegated 3 times and promoted twice under Fink. With Fink's departure at the end of the 2006/07 season, Freiburg finished fourth in the Bundesliga and will miss out on promotion (top 3 direct promotion). In the 16 consecutive years that Fink coached Freiburg, he played only 10 seasons in the Bundesliga.
Rehagel and his disciple Schaff coached Bremen for more than 14 consecutive years.
Rehagel also took over the reins when Bremen was in bundesliga, but his disciple Schaaf's continuous coaching was all done in the Bundesliga. Schaefer spent a season promoting Karlsruhe before leading the team to the Bundesliga. Similarly, Weissweiler's first season at charge of Borussia Monchengung was in the secondary division , when the Bundesliga had not yet been formed and Borussia Monsing was in the Western Division of the Regional League. By upgrading to the play-offs, the Foal was promoted to the Bundesliga for the first time in 1965 and subsequently won three Bundesliga, one German Cup and one UEFA Cup under Weissweiler.
Gayle and Lieberknecht are in the most peculiar situation, the two have been in charge for most of their consecutive time in the lower leagues, so in some statistics, they are not on this "Bundesliga 10-year list". Gail led Cottbus all the way from the 3rd division to the Bundesliga, but was relegated back to the Bundesliga after three years in the Bundesliga (2000/01 to 2002/03). Lieberknecht's coaching at Brunswick began in the Bundesliga and ended with dramatic relegation from bundesliga at the end of the 2017/18 season, during which time he only played in the Bundesliga in 2013/14.
Freiburg's unexpected relegation in 2015 was a stain on Streich's tenure.
What about Streiich? Although he led the team to successful relegation as soon as he took office, and even finished 5th in the Bundesliga and advanced to the Europa League group stage in his first full season in charge, he was unexpectedly relegated in 2015. Just as Fink did not leave class after three relegations that year, Streicht did not lose his mark. A year later, Freiburg returned to the Bundesliga as Bundesliga champions, and in 2016/17, he finished 7th in the Bundesliga as a promoted horse, earning a ticket to the Europa League qualification. Although Freiburg lost to Slovenian Cup winner Dom Zale in the third round of the 2017/18 Europa League qualification round, Streicht was named Kicker magazine's "Person of the Year" at the end of 2017. In the first half of the Bundesliga that just ended, Freiburg finished in third place with 8 wins, 5 draws and 4 losses, and is expected to surpass the 5th place in the 2012/13 season, set the highest Bundesliga ranking record in Straussch's tenure, and even reach the Champions League in history.
Build the most localized team
In fact, Freiburg has only finished the season in the top half of the Bundesliga table three times during Streiich's tenure. For the black forest-based small club, relegation is the main theme of each season. Compared to his achievements, Streicht is more famous for his education. After all, before taking over the professional team, Streicht worked for the Freiburg youth team for 16 years, including coaching the U19 team from 1996/97 to 2010/11, leading the team to win the Youth German Cup three times, and becoming the U19 Bundesliga champions in 2008, such as Ogo, Toprak, Oliver Baumann, Günter and now the captain Günter, all of whom were trained by Streich.
Streicht worked at the Freiburg Academy for 16 years.
Since the 2007/08 season, Streicht has also served as a professional team assistant coach to better integrate the youth elite into the professional team. The main reason why he was willing to succeed Sorge 10 years ago was to ensure that the direction of the club was not wavering, "new coaches bring new people, and we must not forget that we have a youth program that is extremely important for Freiburg." The question is, how do we connect them? That's a matter of stake. It was for this consideration that Streishi, who was once worried that he could not reach himself, was still hardened. As it turned out, Streicht was not only qualified as the manager of the Freiburg pro team, but there was simply no better candidate than him.
During Fink's tenure, Freiburg was filled with a large number of cheap Eastern European and African foreign aid, and now Streicht's team is the most localized team in the Bundesliga. In the main squad for the first half of the season, there are more than 8 local players (including The Italian fringe international Griffe, who was born and raised in Germany), of which Güntel, Heffler and Germany's new international Niko Schlotbeck are all their own youth players, while the only foreign players are Dutch goalkeeper Flecken, Austrian centre-back Linhart and South Korean winger Zheng Youying.
On November 10, 2019, Streich was knocked down by Eintracht Frankfurt captain Abraham, which was impressive, but the two quickly reconciled afterwards.
In Freiburg's current professional squad, there are as many as 12 players from its own youth system. This summer alone, Freiburg has promoted six young talents from the echelon in one fell swoop, with 20-year-old winger Kevin Sad quickly entering the rotation. The Under-21 international has made 14 Bundesliga appearances (five starts) in the first half of the bundesliga, contributing two goals and one assist, including a substitute victory in the half-time finals to help Freiburg beat rivals Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 at home, which was also Streicht's 100th Bundesliga victory. In addition, 19-year-old French defender Sirdia and 20-year-old German winger Weisshaupt also made three Bundesliga appearances in the first half.
In addition to achievements and education, Streicht also has a reputation for building the team's style. He elaborated on his football philosophy after his victory over Bayer Leverkusen: "In my opinion, playing well means being varied in attacking organisation and standing tightly organised. When facing a strong team, it is very important that you can control the ball at your feet and let your opponent chase the ball to play. Keeping the ball running in the team and keeping a lot of players touching the ball can build self-confidence. We want to play our own football, not at the back and die out, no matter who the opponent is. We'd rather lose than stick to the backcourt and stick to it because that's not our style of play, it's not what we want. ”
Nova Shad won off the bench to give Streicht his 100th Bundesliga win.
Today Freiburg are mainly 343, and it is also possible to flexibly switch to the four-back system, and the 4231 or 4222 is also often used. In the absence of a prolific goalscorer (plagued by injuries and Nils Peterson's little playing time this season), Freiburg's firepower is scattered, with 12 players scoring goals in half a season, with striker Heller, left winger Griffe and centre-back Linhart all tied for the top scorer in the team with four goals. Scoring 28 goals in 17 rounds, Freiburg only ranks 6th in the Bundesliga, but conceded only 16 goals to be the least combined with Bayern.
"I can't imagine Freiburg without Straussch"
Streicht has led Freiburg to 304 Bundesliga matches, in addition to 100 wins, a 90 draw and 114 defeats. Counting the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal and European competitions, Streicht's report card is 138 wins, 101 draws and 128 defeats in 367 games. Looking around Europe's top five leagues, only Atletico Madrid boss Simeone has been in charge longer than Streich – just 6 more days. Among the active bundesliga managers, the second longest consecutive coach is the Swiss Urs Fischer, but he has led the Berlin Union for only 3 years and 5 months, which is far from Straussch. Meanwhile, the 56-year-old Streicht is currently the oldest manager in the Bundesliga.
On 26 September, Streicht led the team to bid farewell to their old home stadium, Dreisam Stadium, with a win.
In fact, in 2019, Freiburg once considered a friendly breakup with Streich, and even had a "plan B" - the Hungarian Jolt Loew who was working as a teaching assistant at Paris Saint-Germain. But now Freiburg and Straussch are becoming more and more inseparable. In February this year, the two sides renewed their contracts again. Freiburg's outstanding performance so far this season indicates that the next contract extension is not far away.
Nils Peterson says he can't imagine what would have happened to Freiburg without Streicht.
Peterson, the top scorer in Freiburg who has been with Streicht for six years, said: "His story is unbelievable. I think once he leaves here, the mark he leaves will be huge. I can't imagine what that would have been like, because Freiburg would not have been Freiburg at all without Straussch. "That day will come. But before that day comes, we still have plenty of time to enjoy the success, joy, passion, and witty words that Streich brought.