Freiburg-Borussia Dortmund preview

They may have beaten Real Madrid in the Champions League on Wednesday night, but Borussia Dortmund travel to a Freiburg side who sit just one point behind them in the table this weekend. Jürgen Klopp’s reigning 1. Bundesliga champions currently trail league-leading Bavarian giants Bayern Munich by 12 points after just eight games, with inconsistent away form being Dortmund’s major problem.

However, last weekend’s home loss in the Revierderby against Schalke emphasised just what a difficult period Dortmund are currently enduring domestically, with Klopp’s decision to play a three-man defence in that game backfiring. The return to his usual 4-2-3-1 in the 2-1 victory over Real Madrid means that such an experiment is extremely unlikely to be risked again tomorrow.

Freiburg, meanwhile, are floating along nicely, although given the limited resources at coach Christian Streich’s disposal, he’ll be thinking the sooner his side can reach the 35-point mark, the better. After last weekend’s 2-0 win over woeful Wolfsburg, Freiburg only need another 24 points from the 26 matchdays left to play to achieve that target, and who would bet against them at this stage to earn a fifth successive season in 1. Bundesliga?

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Freiburg 1-1 Hannover

The formations and players that contested the opening half-hour.

Two of the Bundesliga’s best strikers made their mark as Hannover and Freiburg played out a 1-1 draw that keeps the latter in the relegation zone. For nearly 70 minutes, it had looked as though the class of Mohammed Abdellaoue was going to settle a not particularly memorable tie in the visitors’ favour. They were the better team in the first half, and took the lead through an own goal after great work by the Norwegian international. Yet, despite demonstrating on a number of occasions that they offered more edge, technical ability, penetration and pace than Freiburg, Hannover – in an unusual-for-them 4-3-1-2 system – still had to endure one or two nervy moments. Nevertheless, Mirko Slomka’s centre-back pairing of Karim Haggui and Emmanuel Pogatetz did a fantastic job of nullifying dangerman Papiss Demba Cissé on the whole, keeping Freiburg’s chances to a bare minimum. However, it was the same two defenders who were at fault positionally for Freiburg’s equalizer, failing to step out quickly enough, thereby allowing Cissé to head home the sort of chance he never misses. The hosts then finished the match as the stronger of the two teams, but Hannover defended solidly, ensuring they took at least a point having squandered the other two.

Match preview here.

Hannover instantly attacked down the left-hand side, looking to exploit Freiburg’s inexperienced right-back Jonathan Schmid (who was standing in for the injured Mensur Mujdža). Some slick one-two football allowed the visitors to get a few balls into the box, but Freiburg sat deep, defended doggedly, and weathered the – slight – early storm. However, when the home side got the chance to take the ball down in the midfield in the fourth minute, Hannover’s banks stood high, eliminated the corridors, and barely had to press – the lack of room in itself was enough to break the hosts’ moves down.

Freiburg-Hannover preview

Struggling Freiburg host hit-and-miss Hannover in the Bundesliga this afternoon. Despite being second-bottom in the league, the hosts have actually scored more goals than their eighth-placed guests, who are still battling on two fronts this season given their participation in the Europa League (both sides, however, have already been dumped out of the DFB-Pokal). Nevertheless, Hannover’s line-leader Mohammed Abdellaoue has as many goals (eight) as the highly sought-after Freiburg man, Papiss Demba Cissé, and the away side have a better head-to-head record against today’s hosts than any other side in the division. And, when the sides last met in Freiburg back in April, Hannover won 3-1.

Freiburg 1-2 Hamburg

How the teams by and large lined-up during the first half.

Hamburg remain bottom of the table despite beating fellow strugglers Freiburg in a mistake-laden game at a sunny Badenova-stadion. Interim coach Frank Arnesen needed to guide the north German side to a two-goal margin victory to haul themselves out of 18th spot, but the win at least moves the club level on points with Freiburg and Augsburg. However, if the home side hadn’t been so wasteful in front of goal in the second half, they would have won this game comfortably. Despite producing a wonderfully disciplined first half performance, Hamburg’s defence fell to pieces in the second half, and were ultimately bailed out by their deadly attackers. HSV have now won two of their last three games, and incoming coach Thorsten Fink will have seen enough from this performance to suggest that his new team are too good to go down.

Match preview here.

The game started quite slowly, with most of HSV’s players getting a touch as Freiburg sat off. Despite Papiss Cissé doing well to win a corner in the second minute after his side stopped Hamburg’s attempts at going forward, the hosts’ made nothing of it. Both teams struggled to string passes together, and the game was rather bitty overall in the opening five minutes. However, in the sixth minute, a scoop over the top saw former HSV man Anton Putsila released down the right, only for his subsequent sharp, half-volley cross to be cleared by a well-positioned Jeffrey Bruma. Between the fifth and tenth minute, Heung-Min Son started to impose himself on the game; the South Korean dropping deep and pulling wide to link play or flick through others, and showing great movement to evade the man in stripes tasked with shackling him. At the other end, Cissé was also showing some nice touches to help get his side’s widemen into the game, but what the hosts lacked was someone in the box supporting the Senegalese striker for the crosses that followed. 

Freiburg-Hamburg preview

Two teams from polar opposite ends of Germany but very similar positions in the Bundesliga table meet later on this afternoon in an early-season six-pointer. Rock-bottom HSV make the seven-hour trip south to Freiburg, knowing that a two-goal margin victory would be enough to leapfrog their hosts into the heady heights of 16th position. Despite a two-week international break – during which both clubs saw players called up to represent countries in a variety of continents – making the sides’ last league fixtures seem like they took place a lifetime ago, the players and staff at Hamburg will remember far too clearly what it felt like to be beaten 2-1 at home to Schalke, and will be keen to make amends. Although their newly-appointed coach, Thorsten Fink, won’t be on the bench for this fixture, it nevertheless provides the perfect opportunity for those selected to show the new man what they can do.

Bayern Munich 7-0 Freiburg

The formations adopted as the first half drew to a close.

Bayern Munich stormed back to the top of the Bundesliga with a professional performance against an alarmingly weak and lacklustre Freiburg side. Mario Gómez and Franck Ribéry were the goal-getting stars of the show, but not one man in red had a bad game – something that can’t be said for their white-shirted opponents, who look set for a season-long relegation battle.

Match preview here. 

The home side took hold of possession immediately, their initial tactic being to get Franck Ribéry on the ball; either by him coming deep to collect it, or through being fed on the overlap. The Frenchman had the trickery, pace and guile to truly trouble Stefan Reisinger and Maximilian Nicu early on, but Freiburg took advantage of their energy tanks still being full by flooding back in droves and covering the balls which entered Oliver Baumann’s box.

Bayern, who didn’t have to press that hard to force turnovers whenever deep and panicky Freiburg got their hands on a loose ball, took just seven minutes to go 1-0 up. Leaving a huge gap outside the box for Bastian Schweinsteiger to take the ball in and have a look, no pressure was applied on the German international who picked out Thomas Müller on the box edge – surrounded by bodies, but taking possession as if he had all the space in the world. He slipped in Toni Kroos through the left-hand side of the box, and the youngster squared for a  Mario Gómez tap in!

Bayern Munich-Freiburg preview

One of the Bundesliga’s oldest coaches comes face to face with one of the newest on Saturday afternoon as Bayern Munich take on Freiburg. Jupp Heynckes’ Bayern side cemented their position at the top of the Bundesliga table before most of the squad jetted off across the world to represent their respective countries during the international break; Marcus Sorg’s Freiburg side, meanwhile, have dropped eight points from the four games played so far in the 2011/12 Bundesliga season.

Despite starting the campaign with a 1-0 home defeat to Borussia Mönchengladbach and a scrappy injury-time victory against Wolfsburg, Bayern have hammered eight goals past Hamburg and Kaiserslautern in the two domestic games since, and also convincingly put FC Zurich to the sword to cement their place in the Champions League group stage.