He knows how to do it if he stands correctly and gives himself free space. The last time we saw it was last Sunday, when Michael Gregoritsch gave a wave to his colleague Ritsu Doan, then took a few steps to gain free space, jumped up and headed the Japanese’s sailing cross excellently to give SC Freiburg a 2-0 lead at 2-1 -Victory in the Bundesliga duel at VfL Bochum. A typical goal for the 29-year-old Austrian center forward, who has been richly rewarded these weeks for being in the right place at the right time.
The Styrian helped his club to two European holidays when he scored the ecstatically celebrated winning goal to make it 3-2 in extra time in the Freiburg second leg in the play-off games to reach the round of 16 after a 0-0 draw in the first leg in February 0-2 deficit against RC Lens. Here, too, he initially created space with a release movement so that he could seemingly casually push the ball into the goal.
What seemed so easy, the sensitive goalscorer felt like a difficult test before the ball was in. He later clarified questions for journalists. “You don’t know what kind of pulse you have when you put the ball past the goalkeeper. Then you have a millisecond and think, ‘lecko mio, if it passes by now’. And then there’s a huge relief.”
A professional life in contrasts
Just like in the 1-0 win in the first leg of the round of 16 a week ago over the London Premier League club West Ham United, when Gregoritsch, who was a frequent substitute and once again a conspicuous space interpreter, pushed a shot cross from his Hungarian colleague Roland Sallai over the goal line and was then cheered on by his teammates and the unleashed Freiburg fans in the home stadium.
The Austrian (51 international matches), who has been well integrated into the SC Freiburg team since the 2022/23 season, was highly praised by his team captain Christian Günter: “He always comes in and is hungry to want to help us. This is extraordinary.”
The 1.93 meter tall athlete is extraordinary. The sensitive game decision maker can also be a procrastinator who is significantly affected by a long series of failures in his special discipline of scoring goals. The actually massive man from Graz didn’t score once in his first ten league appearances this season, before scoring three goals in the following three games and then practicing abstinence again in the five games that followed. He now has five goals in 23 Bundesliga matches: 35th place in the top scorer rankings. In the Europa League, however, Gregoritsch is the fourth-best goalscorer with five goals, including a hat-trick in the group game against Olympiacos Piraeus.
A professional life in contrasts. This is also part of the character of this professional with a high school diploma, who was trained in sports at a young age by his father Werner, who is now the head coach of the Austrian U-21 national team. Werner Gregoritsch gave the boy, who was then 15 years and 361 days old, the chance to play for the then Bundesliga professionals SV Kapfenberg. And Filius, who came on as a late substitute, immediately took advantage of his first chance to celebrate a historic debut in the 1-1 draw against Austria Vienna in April 2010 as the youngest goalscorer in the Austrian first division to date.
Typical Gregoritsch, who can sometimes be irresistibly accurate, sometimes incredibly hesitant. That’s how it is with sensitive players who celebrate scoring goals like child’s play on good days and hesitate and argue on less good days. SC Freiburg, eighth in the Bundesliga, needs the convincing Michael Gregoritsch this Thursday evening (6.45 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Europa League and on RTL+) in the second leg against West Ham United, seventh in the Premier League, in the London Olympic Stadium.
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Possibly again in the unloved role of the joker par excellence and thus the successor to Freiburg’s record goalscorer Nils Petersen. The energetic Styrian, who after years of traveling through the Second and First German Bundesliga feels more at home in Freiburg than anywhere before, believes in a happy ending to this two-parter between two teams of equal strength: “We can survive,” he says, “if we can Going onto the pitch with this mentality from the first leg. And then we’ll rock London – I hope.”
