SC Freiburg vs Hamburger preview - Streich hoping for happy milestone

Posted Friday, December 12, 2014 by PA

Christian Streich hopes to celebrate a century of games as Freiburg coach with a win this weekend when fellow strugglers Hamburg visit the Dreisamstadion.

Streich paid tribute to his coaching staff for helping him through the first 99 games in charge of Freiburg, all of which have come in the top flight of German football.

"It's a round number which means quite a lot to me," Streich said at a press conference.

"Who would ever have thought that we would be able to coach a Bundesliga team for 100 games together?

"These 100 games have been achieved together as a team because it's the same landmark for my assistants Lars Vossler and Patrick Baier, goalkeeper coach Andreas Kronenberg and fitness coach Simon Ickert, as well as for our physiotherapists.

"It's been intensive work from all of us which we've been doing now for almost three years. Of course it's pleasing.

"Now we've got to give it everything to try to be better than Hamburg."

Freiburg, who are in the bottom three of the Bundesliga, would not be able to compete with Hamburg in a financial sense, although that could change in future with one of the biggest backers of the northern Germany side, Klaus-Michael Kuhne, announcing this week he's going to "tighten the purse strings".

"Kuhne's thinking of the future just like I am and he has every right to say what he does," admitted Hamburg coach Josef Zinnbauer, whose side beat Mainz 2-1 last time out to move up to 13th place in the standings, but they are still only two points above the relegation zone.

"We need to work on getting things right because it's something which also bothers me.

"We're not yet playing well as a team and we're not getting the ball moving around like we should do either, constantly misplacing passes."