A victory was promised. “We owe it to the coach,” said Freiburg striker Michael Gregoritsch. The duel against Heidenheim was coming up – and with it Christian Streich’s last home game. There was no success, only a 1:1 (1:1) result. The Freiburg coach was not granted the victory as an emotional framework. But of course he won over the emotions, draw or not. “Christian Streich, you are the best man,” the Freiburg spectators sang immediately after the final whistle.
At first he stood there motionless, his hand over his mouth. Then he sat down on the dugout, his eyes wet but still without tears. He remained seated for minutes, silent, absorbed in himself, while the stadium continued to sing: “Christian Streich, Christian Streich, Christian Streich, you are the best man.”
At some point the 58-year-old got up, was given a microphone and trotted onto the pitch. The team stood behind him, symbolically, with commemorative shirts. It said: “You never go completely.”
The Stones performed during the stadium round
And then, enter Prank. “Adieu legend” was read on a poster. A little further away, the Heidenheim team, which attended the ceremony as a whole, applauded. “I don’t want to say much,” Streich said. He congratulated Heidenheim on winning the point: “If we can’t win a home game, then I would like it best if that happened against Heidenheim.” He wanted to “thank you very much,” Streich said to the fans, “for everything. I would like to thank everyone who supported me in the club. Who were lenient with me, who sometimes looked the other way when it wasn’t correct from me. I thank you for everything, for the wonderful games, for your love and closeness to the club. Thank you very much, all the best.”
He then went around the stadium, waving and applauding the fans. The stadium management played “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones. Prank? Moved, touched, moved. He saw many crying faces. A goodbye that hurt. He was on his last few meters when a supporter ran onto the pitch and wanted to break through to Streich. Shortly beforehand he was stopped by the stewards. But Streich intervened. He took the tearful man in his arms. Do we need more symbolism, gesture, feeling? Unique, simply Christian Streich.
Prank and the crying speedster
Source: dpa/Tom Weller
Before the game, however, he had consciously appeared calm. There was also something else at stake: keeping pursuers Heidenheim at a distance and keeping an eye on the European Cup. That was the route. The game has “no meaning” because of him and his departure, Streit said in an interview with the Sky reporter shortly before kick-off. The training week was like any other. “Except that there were over a thousand people at the public training, that was different three or four years ago. And I got a few presents that I was very happy about. Everything else was the same,” he said.
But then he gave an insight into his inner life. In order to channel his emotions, the 58-year-old reported, he “built a little box inside of me. Everything goes in there, I decided. Otherwise you won’t make it. This has been going on for many weeks now. Otherwise it will go up and down and then you will be emotionally exhausted. That’s too much, and I’ve managed it so far. It wasn’t all that easy that I managed to do that. I have to say: I didn’t do that badly.” He smiled after the last sentence, the corners of his mouth twitched, his eyes narrowed slightly pained. At that moment, discipline fought against emotion. But Streich controlled himself, once again.
“Christian Streich impresses with his authenticity”
He announced his departure from SC Freiburg in mid-March – after 29 years at the club, including more than twelve years as head coach. Streich said that “now is the right time to make room for new energies, new people and new opportunities.” He doesn’t want to miss the right time to leave: “I don’t want to have to do it every three days anymore. In the current situation I would no longer be good enough.”
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He only receives praise from all sides. For example from Heidenheim’s coach before the start of the game. Streich had primarily “impressed him with his authenticity,” reported Frank Schmidt, as his long-serving colleague had also been a coach at the same club for what felt like an eternity: “Christian Streich is the way he is. You can only admire what he has done and achieved with Freiburg.”
His last appearance in the Bundesliga for the time being will be in the game against 1. FC Union Berlin in a week’s time on Saturday (3:30 p.m., in the WELT sports ticker). Streich’s successor will be Freiburg’s former captain Julian Schuster.
The Petersens are mourning the coach’s departure
Freiburg’s former goalscorer Nils Petersen said that Streich personally impressed him most “with his humanity”: “Putting himself in the player’s shoes, questioning everything. Asking four times a week how you are doing and whether everything is okay. Whether you are ready to give 100 percent performance on the weekend. You don’t have to communicate with players one to eleven at all. More like the players behind it. You just need them in the season. He does that very, very well. You can tell how sorry he is when he has to tell players: You have to go to the bench, you have to go to the stands. That’s what makes it human. That’s what’s in our football circus – and that’s what makes it so special.”
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Streich was able to warm up to many topics with a player. Petersen reported about the origin of the person, the family: “When my family came to visit, he was always incredibly interested in it. My mother and my grandmother grieved in the same way as I did, even though they saw him for maybe two net days and I saw him for eight and a half years.
