If it were all about popularity, SC Freiburg would always be in the top third of the table in the Bundesliga.
For the time being, the people of southern Baden have also arrived there in terms of sport this season.
As a little big, the sports club took fourth place ahead of the first league game in the new stadium on Saturday against RB Leipzig (3:30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky).
And how!
Coach Christian Streich's team is the only one in its class to have not lost an encounter in the first seven match days. Also because she has worked consistently and persistently to assert her clever football with many ball conquests and high speed even against supposedly better-manned teams. The positive interim conclusion for the Underdog Champion correlates with further good news from Freiburg these days. At its general meeting on Wednesday, the club reported a profit of 9.8 million euros from the past financial year, which was characterized by the consequences of the corona pandemic: games in empty stadiums.
The Freiburg, however, who at the same time had their new, around 76 million euro expensive stadium in the north of the city completed and for this took 26.45 million euro out of their own capital in addition to a third-party loan of 40.5 million euro, generated this considerable additional income (37.3 million euros) from the transfers of national players Luca Waldschmidt and Robin Koch to Benfica Lisbon and Leeds United and their goalkeeper Alexander Schwolow to Hertha BSC.
As CFO Oliver Leki casually communicated to the members, they “got through the season well”.
New stadium, new president
Over the years, the club has accumulated equity capital of 93 million euros, which has never caused it to be immodest but, where necessary, as in the stadium construction, to sensible investments. Since Wednesday there has been a representative at the top again: the former director of the Freiburg Rotteck-Gymnasium, Eberhard Fugmann. The teacher inherited the winemaker Fritz Keller, who switched to the German Football Association in 2019 and who, as the failed DFB president, found no new luck.
The future of SC Freiburg also looks promising because nobody there forgets what makes this club so special. The club, which made just one new addition this summer, Maximilian Eggestein, who came from SV Werder Bremen, benefits from the years of outstanding youth work at the Freiburg football school, where Streich also learned his trade from scratch. Meanwhile, several Freiburgers like Nico Schlotterbeck, Yannik Keitel, Kevin Schade or Noah Weißhaupt have made their mark in the German jersey, from the senior national team to the German U20 team.
Elsewhere, one may sometimes think too big.
Two days before the Bundesliga premiere, Streich conjured up the spirit of the old Dreisamstadion in the new arena for a maximum of 34,700 spectators.
“I very much hope,” he said, “that you don't let yourself be blinded by things that seem a bit newer and fancier.” So that “this spirit remains, this struggle against the bigger - and not to think, even with them To be bigger ”.
If this urgent wish is fulfilled, “we have good years ahead of us”.
So staying true to yourself is still part of Freiburg's DNA - may this club continue to grow year after year and be an almost unattainable role model for the really little ones in the league.