When one of your most experienced players drops you in it, there really is no comeback. As Freiburg’s players stood in the corridors of Stade Europa-Park picking the bones out of a draining week, ending in the just-finished, narrow defeat by the runaway leaders, Bayer Leverkusen, and which had incorporated a chastening, emphatic Europa League exit at West Ham, perhaps guards were down, careless words falling out of leaden lips.
The defender Christian Günter, approaching the mark of 400 first-team games for the club, spoke of his hope that the Bundesliga’s longest-serving coach, Christian Streich, would stay on, despite the sense of a season denouement with no contract extension signed by the man in charge. “It was, or is, a pleasure to train under him,” Günter stumbled and then corrected himself. He has been there almost every step of the way of Streich’s glorious 12-year spell in charge and even imagining a different voice giving the instructions will take some getting used to, once he leaves at the season’s end.
Streich confirmed what had been suspected for a while on Monday morning with a simple, stark video piece directly down the camera released by the club. He talked of breaking the news “with a heavy heart, a very heavy heart”, but when he put into words the entirety of his work at the club, 29 years since first arriving to coach the youth team in 1995 (“It is the right time to let in new energy, new people, new opportunities”) it reminded you of his wisdom, of what has made him so longstanding and so special.
It is not just that Streich has turned Freiburg into an established top-half Bundesliga club, that he has led them into the back end of the Europa League for successive seasons, that he has transformed the scale and the expectations of the club in leading them to the all-new Europa-Park, all things which are more than noteworthy. It is that he did those things while retaining his intrinsic goodness and humanity. He frequently engages journalists on topics outside football. Politics, family, the world around us. Streich gave everything to football, but never treated football like it was everything.
He cycled to work at the club’s old home, the Dreisamstadion, until the move to the new digs in 2021. He understood the ridiculousness of his vocation’s demands. “The coaching profession has deformed me to a certain extent,” he lamented in an interview with Kicker in December, one of the many hints in retrospect that the end was nigh. “I can’t and don’t want to do that for another 10 years.” He will not be stuck for things to do outside football if that is the path he chooses.
Streich knows he has been lucky to choose the manner of his exit, with a relatively happy ending. That is not the luxury for most coaches. Niko Kovac must have looked to the skies above Wolfsburg’s Volkswagen Arena on Saturday afternoon and acknowledged that sometimes it’s just not happening. The clouds had looked like breaking for a while, with Patrick Wimmer giving Wolfsburg some sunlight with a welcome lead in the ninth minute, a decisive finish met with an outpouring of relief. Yet when it was the same Wimmer who was caught pondering on the ball on the stroke of half-time by Kevin Mbabu, subsequently bringing down the former Wolfsburger on the edge of the area and receiving a straight red card, the writing was on the wall.
The referee, Timo Gerach, was not swayed by home arguments that Maxence Lacroix had been handily placed to cover, and that Arne Maier’s resulting free-kick deflected in off Maximilian Arnold to give Augsburg an equaliser added insult to injury – and made clear which way the wind was blowing. Kristijan Jakic’s double after the break sealed three points for the visitors but that, really, was just detail.
It had been clear for some time that both Kovac and Wolfsburg needed to move on but, as his voice cracked with emotion in his post-match press conference, it was also clear that an ending this immediate and brutal – officially confirmed first thing on Sunday morning – had not been the plan. Eleven competitive games without a win had forced the issue despite the club having hoped to leave a separation to the summer. By Sunday afternoon Ralph Hasenhüttl had been confirmed as Kovac’s replacement on what the club describes as a long-term contract, taking on his first Bundesliga job since leaving RB Leipzig nearly six years ago. He now arrives sooner than expected with safety the priority, with Die Wölfe only six points above the relegation playoff spot.
Some careless words heralded the end of Kovac’s tenure too, with his former player Max Kruse sticking the boot into the wounded coach on his podcast Flatterball last week. The former Germany striker, quickly removed from the first-team squad by Kovac when he arrived in 2022, described the coach as “an absolute disaster [of a] character”. Kruse went on to talk about his social group gossiping that Kovac having “no idea, and when will he be gone?” One of the group, Yannick Gerhardt, remains at the club (though was banned on Saturday) and was forced to do some uncomfortable public backtracking. If the club preferred to stay silent, Liverpool’s sporting director, Jörg Schmadtke – formerly in the post at Wolfsburg – felt the need to talk to Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung to make his views clear. “The idea that people like Kruse should be talking about character leaves me lost for words,” he scoffed.
The timing of Kruse’s attack, though, said everything about Kovac’s vulnerability – and the tardiness of Wolfsburg’s action. Finding the right moment to say goodbye is rarely easy.
Borussia Dortmund 3-1 Eintracht Frankfurt, Darmstadt 2-5 Bayern Munich, Freiburg 2-3 Bayer Leverkusen, Heidenheim 1-1 Borussia Mönchengladbach, Hoffenheim 0-3 Stuttgart, Köln 1-5 RB Leipzig, Mainz 2-0 Bochum, Union Berlin 2-1 Werder Bremen, Wolfsburg 1-3 Augsburg
Talking points
• Leverkusen are rarely swayed by emotion, tiredness or anything else these days, even after a punishing schedule. 1-0 up at Freiburg on Sunday through Florian Wirtz, they were pegged back inside 10 minutes but held their poise admirably in the closing stages to preserve a 3-2 lead, the suddenly in-form Patrick Schick having scored the clinching goal with a sublime finish. With the enduring 10-point gap at the top, the extent of Harry Kane’s ankle injury – sustained after he scored his 31st Bundesliga goal of the season in Saturday’s 5-2 win at Darmstadt – might even make it worth Bayern resting him around the Champions League tie with Arsenal.
• Just above Darmstadt at the foot of the table, Köln are in real trouble, trounced 5-1 at home on Friday night by Champions League-chasing Leipzig and slipping into the bottom two after Mainz’s win over Bochum. Yet the 50,000 RheinEnergieStadion continues to sell out and many stayed behind to loudly support their players at full time in extraordinary scenes. “We as a club, as a team with the fans, we stand together,” said their coach, Timo Schulz. “Gänsehaut Garantiert!” – goosebumps guaranteed – says a banner on the concourse behind the stands just before you enter. No kidding.
• After Leipzig’s win, Dortmund retook fourth place in Sunday’s late game, but only just. They trailed to Eintracht Frankfurt after a fine goal from their former player Mario Götze in the first half and needed late strikes from Mats Hummels and an Emre Can penalty to seal it. Can, the captain, had earlier had a red card overturned via VAR – he called Tobias Stieler’s original decision to send him off “unbelievable” and “not even a foul in England”.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bayer Leverkusen | 26 | 48 | 70 |
| 2 | Bayern Munich | 26 | 47 | 60 |
| 3 | Stuttgart | 26 | 29 | 56 |
| 4 | Borussia Dortmund | 26 | 21 | 50 |
| 5 | RB Leipzig | 26 | 28 | 49 |
| 6 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 26 | 7 | 40 |
| 7 | Augsburg | 26 | 1 | 35 |
| 8 | Hoffenheim | 26 | -6 | 33 |
| 9 | Freiburg | 26 | -12 | 33 |
| 10 | Werder Bremen | 26 | -6 | 30 |
| 11 | Heidenheim | 26 | -9 | 29 |
| 12 | Borussia M'gladbach | 26 | -4 | 28 |
| 13 | Union Berlin | 26 | -17 | 28 |
| 14 | Wolfsburg | 26 | -13 | 25 |
| 15 | VfL Bochum | 26 | -24 | 25 |
| 16 | Mainz | 26 | -24 | 19 |
| 17 | Cologne | 26 | -27 | 18 |
| 18 | Darmstadt | 26 | -39 | 13 |
