Accompanied by the onset of winter with plenty of snow, the Bundesliga starts the new year at the weekend, which begins with an English week in the league after the short winter break.
Since the start of training on January 2nd, the sports club has been preparing for the first league game on Saturday against Hamburger SV. Next Wednesday (January 14th, 8:30 p.m.) will be the last game of the Bundesliga first half of the season at RB Leipzig. Four days later, the second half of the league season begins with the away game at FC Augsburg (Sunday, January 18th, 5:30 p.m.).
“Very satisfied with the preparation days we had,” said SC coach Julian Schuster before the encounter with Hamburger SV. “Despite the cold and snow, we had no problems implementing what we set out to do.” The decision not to have a training camp this winter was also the right one.
The team used the very short preparation time last week to go into more detail and “very quickly focus again on the things that set us apart.” A normal week of preparation is now underway again, in which the focus is also on focusing on the opponent.
Hamburger SV, which was promoted back to the Bundesliga last year after seven seasons in the 2nd Bundesliga, comes into the Europa-Park Stadium in thirteenth place in the table and has 16 points in its account after 15 matchdays – four fewer than the sports club, which is in ninth place in the table. Julian Schuster explained that coach Merlin Polzin’s team had now arrived in the Bundesliga. According to the SC coach, HSV is very flexible when playing with the ball, which often makes it difficult “to gain access and win the ball”. The Hanseatic team’s other strengths included their speed as well as their pressing and switching game: “This makes Hamburg dangerous when they win the ball because they can then use their speed to switch dangerously.”
For the task of countering such situations in a compact and concentrated manner, the sports club has more defensive personnel available than before the winter break. At the start of training after the New Year, the SC coaching team was able to welcome almost all of the professionals back on the pitch, including Philipp Lienhart, Max Rosenfelder, Eren Dinkçi and Niklas Beste, who were injured at the end of last year.
In addition to Daniel Kofi Kyereh (advanced training), only Cyriaque Irié was missing. The attacker took part in the Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco with Burkina Faso. Last Tuesday, he was eliminated from the round of 16 with his national team after a 3-0 defeat against defending champions Ivory Coast and was expected back in Freiburg on Thursday. “It is very pleasing that Cyriaque was able to get playing time, that all the boys were on the pitch and that we can rely on all the players at the weekend,” explained Schuster.
Then SC Freiburg will also have to score their first Bundesliga goals against Hamburger SV in the Europa-Park Stadium. The last Bundesliga home game against the Hanseatic League took place in the Dreisamstadion a good eight years ago in December 2017 and ended 0-0. The last two competitive games between the two clubs were encounters in the DFB Cup: In October 2024, the sports club won 2-1 at home in the second round. Two and a half years earlier, the SC won the semi-final game at the Volksparkstadion 3-1 in April 2022 and reached the DFB Cup final for the first time.
However, the last league game before the winter break, the spectacular 4-3 win at VfL Wolfsburg, lies in the very recent past. Before the first competitive game in 2026, Julian Schuster formulated his goal: “We want to build on what distinguished us before the winter break.”
Dirk Rohde
Photo: SC Freiburg
