Freiburg’s long-serving Christian Streich is leaving while Niko Kovac exited Wolfsburg amid barbs from former players
When one of your most experienced players drops you in it, there really is no comeback. As Freiburg’s players stood in the corridors of Stade Europa-Park picking the bones out of a draining week, ending in the just-finished, narrow defeat by the runaway leaders, Bayer Leverkusen, and which had incorporated a chastening, emphatic Europa League exit at West Ham, perhaps guards were down, careless words falling out of leaden lips.
The defender Christian Günter, approaching the mark of 400 first-team games for the club, spoke of his hope that the Bundesliga’s longest-serving coach, Christian Streich, would stay on, despite the sense of a season denouement with no contract extension signed by the man in charge. “It was, or is, a pleasure to train under him,” Günter stumbled and then corrected himself. He has been there almost every step of the way of Streich’s glorious 12-year spell in charge and even imagining a different voice giving the instructions will take some getting used to, once he leaves at the season’s end.
