Anyone who is perhaps not allowed to watch this Christian Streich up close every weekend, but is dependent on anecdotes and eyewitness reports and otherwise knows above all television pictures of Streich, was either amazed or not at all amazed at the realization on Tuesday evening: Streich is really like that all say.
He's always doing something unusual compared to his fellow coaches, but he's been doing it so often for years that it's actually neither unusual nor odd.
It's just prank.
And this season you can't shake the feeling that everything, really everything follows a higher plan.
The SC Freiburg coach sent four players to stretch after 20 minutes.
Actually, this is a warning signal to the team.
At this point, however, SC was leading 2-0 in the cup semifinals at Hamburger SV.
Later, Streich raged on the bench despite the comfortable lead, he almost fought with the fourth official, who hugged him like a referee and talked to him.
You know the pictures and you can't possibly please him.
In injury time he ran towards the HSV bench, grimacing wildly.
The 5,000 fans from the southwest were already singing about their trip to Berlin.
First as if out of his mind, then the fairest sportsman on earth - when the good referee Deniz Aytekin had blown the whistle for the semi-finals of the DFB Cup, Streich went purposefully to everyone on the pitch who had a diamond on their clothing and hugged them , talked, listened, radiated empathy from every pore.
Of course he didn't put on the red final T-shirt that Freiburg had prepared, and when the television moved him or tried to elicit some memorable words of enthusiasm from him, there wasn't much: "If we don't make it in the final, At least we were in Berlin.” Or: “Some of the boys have already been in the A youth final in Berlin – and they won too.” Or: “The team was very disciplined.
The boys are ready to work against the ball.”
With his sentences, with his complete sobriety, which contrasts with his craziness on the bench, he not only eludes the football-typical exaggeration, he leaves his interlocutors irritated.
When ARD expert Bastian Schweinsteiger wanted to praise him for identifying weak points at HSV and adapting his own game to them, Streich replied with a shrug: "Well, what do tactics mean.
You prepare a bit and Vagnoman and Schonlau are right-footed, both playing on the left.”
In Hamburg, the long-term coach let his team play outsider football.
HSV, not Freiburg, was optically the first division club, much more possession of the ball, HSV passed and passed, but nothing happened because Freiburg lured Hamburg into safe areas and allowed the pass orgies there.
Streich granted HSV the role of pseudo-giant they had been used to for years.
His team, on the other hand, waited for mistakes, and when they did, they struck.
The game was over after 35 minutes when Freiburg led 3-0.
The hour until the final score of 3:1, with the grandiose mood of changing fan chants, only reminded us of what it used to be like in the Volkspark.
In unison with the possible achievement of the Champions League, a historically significant Freiburg season is emerging.
But instead of interpreting the size of the moment with emotion, Streich later spoke of how merciless football was.
At the moment his team is successful, but in principle anyone could be affected, as you can see right now when so many traditional clubs in the second division are fighting for promotion.
Typical prank, long-time companions will say.
After all, his players cheered, sang and drank appropriately.
And yes, they showered their trainer in front of the cameras - with water.
Parts of the coach's sobriety seemed to have passed to them too.
"We are so successful because one is always there for the other," said Nicolas Höfler unadorned, the scorer for the 2-0 in the 17th minute.
Nils Petersen had previously headed the 1-0 after one of Freiburg's well-known good corners (11th).
When Vincenzo Grifo skillfully fired his penalty into the top corner in the 35th minute, the difference in cleverness was finally visible to everyone.
The sports club later let HSV run in without much more happening than Robert Glatzel's header to make it 3-1 (88th).
This well-managed club hasn't only been regionally significant and somehow cute in appearance for a long time, even if the chest sponsor "Schwarzwaldmilch" sounds so nice after the association league.
In the fully occupied and party-ready Volksparkstadion, the Freiburg internationals made an appearance;
Mark Flekken in goal, the Austrian Philipp Lienhart, central defender Nico Schlotterbeck.
Maximilian Eggestein and Vincenzo Grifo were or are on the threshold of their selection teams.
One should not deceive oneself there.
The Freiburgers are now also nominally in the top league of the Bundesliga, and there is actually a risk of selling out in the rise, as the rumors about Schlotterbeck show - the "Bild" newspaper reported that he would go to Dortmund in the summer for a transfer fee of 25 million euros become.
Schlotterbeck denied an agreement on the evening of the game and preferred to enjoy the moment, as he had avenged his uncle Niels, so to speak, who had also been in the cup final in June 1987, but lost 1:3 against HSV with the Stuttgarter Kickers.
A game, by the way, in which a certain Christian Streich was part of the Kickers squad – but nothing more: “I was in the stands.
I was too bad.” 35 years later, on May 21, Streich will experience another big final in Berlin.
But – probably – not in the stands.