“I have to watch a few moments again alone. The result is disappointing, and the performance was too on the whole,” said coach Christian Streich in the press conference after the match.

His players had left too much open space on too many occasions in the match and unwillingly paved the way for hattrick-scorer Jean-Philippe Mateta to lead Mainz to their first win of the season. A whole lot of training and many Bundesliga matches later, Freiburg are set to face the Zerofivers again.

With 18 points, Mainz are currently one place above bottom in the table, however their recent results show a positive trend. After 12 losses, four draws and only one win in the first half of the season, Bo Svensson’s team have so far recorded three wins in the Rückrunde, including victories against top teams Leipzig and Mönchengladbach.

Christian Streich says that the last head-to-head fixture should no longer be anywhere near as important as the fact “that Mainz are picking up points again. They have much more energy in their play; they’re ready to hurt their opponents and they’re demanding a lot of themselves physically. They have this basic aggression again, which they are making use of. I hope that we’ll approach the game with a lot of energy and be able to hold our own. It won’t be an easy task.”

But it is a task which the Freiburg players embrace with excitement, as after the 3-0 loss to RB Leipzig last weekend (“Leipzig dominated us in a few one-on-one situations”), securing points from this upcoming match should help towards achieving safety.

“We can go to Mainz with confidence and peace of mind as we have had a really good season so far,” says the Freiburg coach. 34 points from 24 matches is a strong position to be in. The coach says that the goal is to make it easy for the players up top by being tenacious in defence: “I’m excited to see whether we can do that on Saturday.”

With the exceptions of Mark Flekken (rehabilitative training after an elbow operation) and midfielder Lino Tempelmann (ligament injury), all players are available for selection.

Photo: Achim Keller