Coach Julian Schuster and his start at SC Freiburg – Football

After almost 13 years, an era came to an end at SC Freiburg at the end of the season with the departure of Christian Streich as coach of the Baden team. Streich’s time at SCF was not only successful in sporting terms, the 59-year-old was and is highly valued as a person both inside and outside the club.

A difficult legacy for Julian Schuster

It is not exactly easy to take on such a legacy, you might think. The shoes to fill seem big. But Streich’s successors do not think in these terms. “I have always said that it is not about filling Christian’s shoes. He and his work are a signpost that shows us the direction of how we should think, work and behave in Freiburg,” said Julian Schuster on Sunday evening on SWR Sport.

Streich is still a “guide” for Schuster and his team in many things. “There is a lot of Christian in me, my fellow coaches, the staff and the players. Things like the way we deal with the team. That we don’t just talk about content, but also about personal things, about the family and the.” “I was able to learn a lot from him,” said the 39-year-old.

Julian Schuster: From captain to assistant coach to head coach

Julian Schuster is anything but an unknown at SC Freiburg. Between 2008 and 2018, he wore the SCF jersey for ten years, including as captain, before becoming head coach this season as liaison coach and assistant coach under Streich.

The defensive midfielder’s path to professional football was highly unusual. At just 19 years old, Schuster was still playing for FV Löchgau in the district league. At the time, neither he nor his family would have thought that his path would one day lead him to the Bundesliga.

Somehow typical Freiburg

But after an internship at VfB Stuttgart and a trial training session with the Swabians’ second team, he ended up there. The fact that years later he would succeed Christian Streich as a coach and former player, with no previous experience as a head coach but with a strong connection to the SCF, was and remains somehow typical of Freiburg.

Family man Schuster knew early on that he would become a coach

Schuster never actually planned to stay in Freiburg for so long, as he told SWR Sport. Nevertheless, he felt at home in Breisgau from the start. “It’s now our home. Our children were born and grew up in Freiburg. For us as a family, it’s our center, our home,” said the coach.

The father of four already knew during his time as an active player that he wanted to work as a coach later on. “I had a phase as a player when I was no longer playing regularly, where I tried to think from a coach’s perspective. That helped me a lot,” he said looking back and continued: “Due to my physical conditions, I always had to think differently and use my head a lot. That obviously helps me in my current role. And so Schuster went his own way.

Schuster and coaching staff have locked themselves on the farm

The challenge for him as the new head coach was to put into practice all the notes he had made over the years – and there were quite a few. After all, Schuster kept a record of tactical and game-playing content that he liked – even when he was a player.

In order to sort everything out, you need a place to retreat to. “The coaching team and staff locked ourselves in on a farm in the Black Forest to get some structure into it,” Schuster told SWR Sport.

Julian Schuster and SC Freiburg with a successful start to the season

Nevertheless, there were many critics who questioned Schuster’s ability to immediately take on the role of head coach in the Bundesliga and succeed Streich. But Schuster quickly silenced these critics.

In his first competitive game in charge of the coaching bench, the team won a solid 4-0 against VfL Osnabrück in the DFB Cup. On the first matchday of the Bundesliga, the SCF surprisingly but deservedly beat runners-up VfB Stuttgart. After a 0-2 defeat against record champions FC Bayern Munich, in which they put in a decent performance, Freiburg turned a deficit around on Saturday, just as they had on the first matchday, and beat VfL Bochum 2-1.

With seventh place in the table and six points from three games, Schuster and his team have had a more than decent start to the season. If it’s up to him, he’d like to see it continue like this in the coming weeks. Because Schuster knows this much from his playing days: “Victories are the best way to regenerate.”