BERLIN – Freiburg will face leaders Bayern Munich in a rare Bundesliga top match on Saturday after their sensational start where they have beaten Champions League clubs Borussia Dortmund and VfL Wolfsburg to move within three points of the champions.
“There are many reasons for this start,” said Freiburg’s 31-year-old midfielder Nicolas Hoefler, who has been with the club since his youth days.
“It works perfectly at the moment and we are successful,” he added.
What makes Freiburg’s success even more remarkable is that the team’s budget is only a fraction of that of Bayern or Dortmund.
So Bayern’s arena is an appropriate setting for the 300th Bundesliga match in the career of Freiburg coach Christian Streich, whose decade at the club has been spent moulding teams that play attractive and exciting football year in, year out.
It will, however, be their granite defence that will really be tested in Munich, with Freiburg having conceded just seven goals for the league’s best backline. In comparison, Bayern have conceded 10 league goals so far while Dortmund have leaked 15.
But the Bavarians have netted a league record 38 times, more than twice of Freiburg’s 17.
“We are realistic enough to know who we are up against how normally these games look like,” Hoefler said,
“Still, we are confident and that is what we will be taking to the game in Munich. We want to give everything to get the maximum out of it and if that can’t happen then we want to end up with at least a point.”
Bayern are a daunting prospect at the moment, having crushed Benfica 5-2 in the Champions League on Tuesday, three days after beating Union Berlin by the same score in the league.
Apart from a shock German Cup exit following a 5-0 loss to Borussia Moenchengladbach, the Bavarians have scored an impressive 14 goals in their last three league matches.
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