Freiburg go to Leverkusen on Sunday as the Bundesliga leaders, sitting on 13 points with a +10 goal difference after five matches. It is the club’s best start ever to a Bundesliga season, and it has come with four wins from five league games.
That is why Leverkusen Vs Freiburg has turned into one of the first true marker matches of the season. Freiburg have not only won four of their five league games, they have done it with a blend of control and punch that has already produced victories over Werder Bremen, Paderborn and Borussia Mönchengladbach, while their only dropped points came in a 2-2 draw at Eintracht Frankfurt. They also opened their domestic campaign with a 5-1 win at Fortuna Düsseldorf in the first round of the DFB Pokal and started their UEFA Conference League run with a 3-2 home win over Jablonec on Thursday.
The form line is even more striking because Freiburg have scored 14 Bundesliga goals, their most at this stage of a top-flight campaign, and the same number as Leverkusen. Their attack has been led in part by Yuito Suzuki, who has scored four times this season, including a hat-trick against Werder Bremen. But he will miss Sunday’s trip after his sending-off against Schalke last weekend, when Freiburg were level at 1-1 and still found a way to win with ten men.
Schuster said after that game that he was proud the side pushed through with a man down and made it feel as if there was no disadvantage at all. He also said the opposition had very few chances but scored too many goals, a warning that fits the one flaw in Freiburg’s start: three of the four Bundesliga goals they have conceded have come from set pieces. That matters against stronger opponents, even for a team that has built its lead on efficiency rather than volume. Freiburg have also gone with the same starting 11 in each of their last three league matches, with Mio Backhaus behind Philipp Treu, Matthias Ginter, Philipp Lienhart and Jordy Makengo, Yannik Engelhardt and Maximilian Eggestein in midfield, and Niklas Beste, Suzuki and Derry Scherhant behind Igor Matanovic.
Suzuki’s suspension forces Freiburg to change that shape for the first time this season, and Lucas Höler is one option to step into attacking midfield. The wider problem is the schedule around it. Freiburg face Leverkusen, then Monaco in the UEFA Conference League on Thursday, then Bayern Munich at the weekend. For a side that has already matched its strongest scoring start and sits top of the table, the next few days will show whether this opening surge is built to hold up under pressure, or whether the best start in club history is about to meet its hardest test.
