NNot only Christian Streich had tears of emotion in his eyes while watching this masterpiece of kitsch football produced by SC Freiburg’s duel with VfL Wolfsburg on Friday evening. Freiburg’s 2-0 win was also significant, with this result the sports club has preserved its chances of participating in the upcoming Champions League season.
But that prospect of the club’s greatest success faded when Nils Petersen put his right foot on the ball in the 75th minute and scored his first goal of the season. The 34-year-old striker played his very last home game for the Baden Bundesliga club, which has become his home in the past eight and a half years.
He was honored before the game and showered with love throughout the evening. “No one is bigger than the club, but you were damn close,” said a huge banner in front of the Freiburg fan block. Now “de Nils”, as everyone here says about Petersen, who was born in Wernigerode, scored another goal. “I would have written the script the same way,” said the striker.
Petersen, who scored 105 goals in 277 games for SC Freiburg and thus surpassed Joachim Löw as the club’s record goalscorer, had only scored once in the DFB Cup and once in the Europa League this season. Whenever he was substituted on, any attentive observer could see quite clearly that he was increasingly having trouble with the intensity of upscale Bundesliga football. Because he’s gotten older and because Freiburg are now consistently playing at a level that Petersen, even as a young player, was never at home as a matter of course.
“He deserves recognition”
But in Freiburg he is a legend because he scored so many goals and because he went into the second division despite other offers after relegation in 2015. “He deserves the recognition. Nils has been loyal to the club for years, he could definitely have accepted another offer,” said captain Christian Günter, the other goalscorer of the game.
Especially since Petersen was not only important as a professional footballer, he also became a defining factor in Freiburg’s awakening from perpetual relegation candidates to an established Bundesliga club with European Cup ambitions. In 2016, when he missed a crucial penalty in the gold medal final at the Olympic Games, he spoke in an interview about some downsides of professional life. “The football industry is superficial, and we footballers are not that well-read,” he said in “Focus”: “To put it casually, I’ve been stupid for ten years, but I keep my head above water because I can kick quite well.”
“I would have written the screenplay the same way,” says “de Nils” in parting
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Image: dpa
That made big waves, Petersen is by no means stupid. “Nils’s cleverness and technique are unbelievable. He almost always makes the right decisions,” said Streich on Friday: “All players should take Nils as an example. He is a role model. It’s not always just the one way there is. All this is no coincidence. Everyone loves the Nile.”
A close connection has developed between the coach and the goalscorer, because most of the other professionals would have fled at some point if they had only been substitute players with such a good goal rate. In many phases of the collaboration, Streich preferred to have strikers on the field who worked more intensively against the ball at the beginning of the games; when the defenders ran tired, Petersen came and used the preparatory work for his many joker goals, which brought him special attention in the Bundesliga. With 34 goals as a substitute, he leads that particular statistic by a huge margin over Claudio Pizarro, who has 21 of those goals.
On Friday, Freiburg even celebrated a second goal by Petersen. But the video assistant disallowed the goal for a very small and actually irrelevant foul in the making. That was the only mistake in the script, but in the end it didn’t bother anyone anymore. After the final whistle, Petersen celebrated with the fans long before the south stand, taking plenty of time to talk to journalists before later inviting them to a party at his home.
In between, the wonderful kitsch was even refined with a good portion of melancholy, which is an essential part of such a touching piece. “This finality always hurts,” said Petersen, “it’s the people you associate it with. And they won’t be with me every day anymore. That’s what’s a shame.” He shared this sadness with Streich, who “don’t know what it’s going to be like in the dressing room without him,” and who said: “We’ll stay in very close contact, just from the heart. “
