Christian Streich: The Teachings of the Philosopher of the Black Forest

[Tommy]

Long but fantastic article that shows why so many people in Germany appreciate Christian Streich not only as a coach, but also as a person:

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/sports/soccer/bundesliga-freiburg-streich.html?fbclid=IwAR15Gf4qesHx_1B8wy5QjdaecPCMorVx_e1mOju0Ac-vkICVi_22cpJhGhM

The Teachings of the Philosopher of the Black Forest

Christian Streich, the coach of unassuming Freiburg, acts as German soccer’s unofficial social conscience. The Bundesliga’s recent stoppage gave him a chance to reflect on his relationship with his sport.

 

Christian Streich has to go. He is conscious that it is nearing 10 a.m., and training is about to start. His S.C. Freiburg players — he calls them his “colleagues” — will soon be out on the field, wondering where their coach has gone. With a hint of apology, he wonders if we might, perhaps, make these the last couple of questions?

His answers to them include a recent history of Freiburg, the club in southwest Germany he has coached for the last nine years; an overview of the region’s economics and geography, paying special attention to how both intersect with the city’s soccer culture; and a brief but eloquent hymn to the beauty of the Black Forest.

By the time he finished, 10 a.m. had come and gone.

Streich loves to talk. He talks with his eyes, which dance around as he tries to find the right word. He talks with his hands, which perform a complex mime in the air not so much to emphasize a point, but to act it out. He answers at such length that he grins with apology, more than once, at the task he has set the translator.

But the 54-year-old Streich should not be thought of as a blowhard, captivated by the sound of his own voice, expounding rather than talking. What Streich really loves, more than talking, is thinking: exploring an idea to its deepest recesses, interrogating his own positions, investigating his assumptions. He just likes to think out loud.

He also likes to think about any subject under the sun: from ethical consumption (encouraging his players not to buy “chickens tortured for all of their short, undignified lives”) to the rise of the far-right (“if you do not make your stance clear, you share the responsibility once things go in a bad direction”) to soccer’s indulgence in hyperbole (pressure, he said, is not found in a relegation struggle, but when “you fear for your life so much you put yourself and your kids on a boat across the Mediterranean”).

At times, he might have reason to worry he is more famous for what he says than for what he does: that being portrayed as German soccer’s resident philosopher somehow detracts from the quietly impressive job he has done. At Freiburg, he has turned a team of slim budgets and modest ambition into a mainstay of the Bundesliga. (He does not, it is worth pointing out, grant many interviews).
But at other times, Streich becomes a crucial voice: something approaching an unofficial spokesman for German soccer’s social conscience, someone from inside the sport who is prepared to examine — or even just acknowledge — the complexities and hypocrisies of his relationship with soccer. This is one of those times.

The Paradox of the Squeezed Lemon

All the best philosophers have a paradox. This is Streich’s. “I have a son,” he said. “He’s 10. He loves soccer, of course. What else could he do? Poor boy.” Often, they watch soccer on TV together. Streich has to, professionally. His son chooses to, by inclination.

“When the game is over, or it’s halftime, I turn it straight off,” Streich said. “I try to reduce it to just the game. I know a lot of people who do the same. They don’t watch any advertisements, or listen to any criticism from people who don’t understand it, or who are always negative.”

And yet Streich is well aware that the soccer-industrial complex — the ads and the arguments and the analysis, the part that he does not see as healthy for his son — pays his salary.

“I profit from damaging influences,” he said. “Damage is done when a game is on television and an ad for gambling comes on. The ad is on so that we earn so much money. That is wrong. The ad shouldn’t be there, because kids are watching the game, and there’s an ad here telling them to bet. But lots of people get sick when they bet.”

There is a lot about modern soccer that Streich wrestles with, you sense. A few years ago, he became convinced that its current incarnation — the way it will make any accommodation it can with money, the way it is in thrall to vested interests — was no longer sustainable.

“I thought soccer wouldn’t survive this,” he said. “For many years, soccer has been on a knife edge. It is a product, and you can squeeze it like a lemon. You can keep squeezing and juice keeps coming. And there is still juice left now, but the question is how long the people who love it want to watch this lemon get squashed and deformed.”

More recently, though, his view has changed. “Now I think it will survive everything,” he said. “Even when there are people trying to exploit it, the game belongs to those who love it, and we won’t let it be taken from us by those who only think of money.”

Streich loves his sport. But that does not mean that he does not see its flaws; if anything, it means he sees them all the more clearly. He sees the complexities and hypocrisies. All the best philosophers have a paradox.

‘It Is Not Escapism.’

Last month, the Bundesliga’s decision to return — making it the first major soccer league to try to restart — seemed to bring Streich's paradox to life: a real-world example of the tension inherent between the business and the sport of soccer.

It was, as all involved openly acknowledged, primarily a business decision. Failure to complete the season, said Christian Seifert, the Bundesliga’s chief executive, might have endangered the continued existence of more than a dozen clubs.

But to Germany’s powerful organized fan groups, the very idea of playing soccer when fans are not allowed into stadiums — or even to gather in groups to watch on television — was anathema. To them, this was the final squeeze of the lemon. Soccer without fans, in their eyes, is not soccer at all.

Streich, though, did not find the return as awkward as might have been expected. It did not undermine his belief that soccer cannot be destroyed by those who would exploit it. On the day that Germany’s lockdown restrictions had eased sufficiently enough to enable his players to train as a group, he was struck by the look on their faces.

“They’re economically rich,” he said. “But they were so happy. They love this game. There is no player on the pitch who thinks about the money all the time.”

They all started playing, after all, for the sport itself; that was what carried them through the arduous hours of practice, long before anyone offered to pay them.

And even if the desire to return had economic reality at its heart, that did not, in Streich’s eyes, diminish its meaning. As the pandemic has raged across the world and sports leagues have sought ways to return — La Liga returned over the weekend and the Premier League will be back on Wednesday — they have both cast themselves and been cast as a way to help wearied populations find some joy, a chance to escape grinding reality.

To Streich, though, that is a misunderstanding. Soccer is “part of reality,” he said, not an escape from the world.

“It is part of the basis of life for many,” he added. “It is not escapism. For me, it was like eating. As a child, I played soccer more than I ate. It is a cultural artifact. You meet up with a friend, you go to the stadium, you see your friends, you win, you lose, you’re sad, you’re happy. That’s not escapism. It’s culture.”

Its return is a business decision, of course, but it is one that can, in a sense, prove the worth of the sport. More than that, though, it is a step on the long, slow journey back to something approaching normalcy. It is, to Streich, a chance to have “part of life” back.

‘We Have to Tell Them the Other Story.’

What struck Streich, during his first taste of a geisterspiel — a ghost game, as fixtures behind closed doors in Germany are known — was that his players could hear him. Normally, his instructions leave his mouth and drown in a wave of sound. Now, though, his voice travels. He has not experienced that, he said, since he was a youth coach.

The differences he noticed that day against RB Leipzig were all like that: superficial, trivial. For the most part, the game he saw was the same. Not as “emotional,” of course, without fans inside the stadium. “Not as powerful,” because of the absence of color, noise and fervor in the stands. But on the field, instantly recognizable.

“The game is a bit different, but it is not worse,” he said. “Some things are easier for the players, because they are under less stress. For us, it’s about showing that in a new and difficult situation for many people that we can also can play good football. That is what we want to show.”

In every crisis, there is a chance, and this is soccer’s. Everyone wants fans to return, for games to be staged as they once were. But until that day, soccer must seek whatever positives it can from its situation. It must embrace its reality, rather than run from it.

“Lots of people are afraid in Germany, as in other countries,” Streich said. “There is a fear of bankruptcy. Many people are existentially threatened. There are conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists tell a story, and people love stories.

“So we have tell them the other story, the real story. That’s our big responsibility, that we tell good stories during this difficult time. We could say, for example, if we now play without fans in the stadium, you aren’t distracted, you can really see what we’re doing.” To Streich, it is a chance to see the game in its purest form, to understand, on a deeper level, what is happening on the field.

He does believe this is an opportunity. Many of the flaws he sees in soccer have their roots in its eager embrace of what he calls the “basic problem of neoliberalism, where ego is at the top of the list.”

Since the shutdown, though, he has seen a shift: a desire to work together, an awareness that the health of each club depends on the health of the game as a whole, that the success of the enterprise rests on the individual acting for the greater good.

“If we are really disciplined, and we do it, then we have shown that in a sport that is heavily criticized — loads of money, people who are out of touch with reality — we have done something for ourselves, something that links us together,” he said.

That is what Streich, the philosopher of the Black Forest, thinks about the most: the way that soccer unites disparate parts. “Why are nearly all philosophers obsessed with football?” he said. “Because it’s so interesting to observe individual people and see them merge into a group and play together.” That is the story the game can tell. It is the story he wants to tell during the pandemic. But for now, it is past 10 a.m. Training awaits. Christian Streich has to go.

 

 

[nudge]

Legend. 

 

[Coma+]

[Tommy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4I1kBxDIAo&

Shame it can't be embedded, because it's yet another legendary and true speech. 

That's a small summary. But he goes into much more detail in the whole press conference. Love this man. 

 

 

[Tommy]

[Rucksackfranzose]

Exactly 10 years ago Christian Streich signed as Freiburg manager. Hard to believe he's in this function for so long now.

[Tommy]

 

[Tommy]

[Tommy]

Martin Quast from Sport1 kicked it off by asking the following question:

Mr. Streich, I would like to ask you one or two questions about the coaching situation in general. FC Bayern has fired its coach because the season's goals are in jeopardy. Marco Rose in Leipzig, eight matchdays before the end of the season, is talking about how he feels that the end of the world is happening at his club. Sandro Schwarz [Hertha coach] has been getting his nose kicked in for weeks now. VfB Stuttgart now has moved on to their fourth coach. The half-life of coaches is currently only about one year. Only you and a handful of others have been around longer. Of course, you are a special exception because you have nothing to do with all this "hire and fire". How do you see this development? Can you understand Marco Rose when he says "it's the end of the world here"? Even though they are in the cup semi-finals and are closely behind SC Freiburg on 5th place. How do you see this situation of coaches in the Bundesliga at the moment?

Streich's response:

The pressure is immense. But the pressure in society is immense. And because we are always on TV and because many people still love football...even though there are things in football that are catastrophic. Disastrous. But that goes hand in hand with society as a whole.

The pressure is enormous. Ask, if I may say so, the people who are responsible for cleanliness in hotels and clean the rooms. Ask them in what time they have to clean how many rooms.

Everything is individualised. There are hardly any chains of connections in many areas of life. By chain of connections I mean...in the past, hotels were often family-run. People you knew worked there. From the village, from the city. You knew them. There were connections. Over decades, through families. It's all different now. We live in a world of big corporations.

We have major issues. We always talk about the middle class. Small and medium-sized companies are having an incredibly hard time. Yet it is that middle class that has brought us this incredible prosperity and wealth. And not the big corporations. They are the ones who ruin it. They destroy prosperity. They have become independent. And in football you can see that directly, so to speak.

The way things have developed, it's extremely difficult. We have an incredible number of people with mental health problems. These people have mental health problems because they are totally overburdened. Because they no longer get any warmth. Because there are no more reference points. No connections. This is a problem for society as a whole. That's concerning from my point of view. It's scary too.

I don't want to speak for all coaches...I'm not directly effected by this issue, so I can't say anything anyway. You have to ask the coaches who do a good job and still get fired after eight months or after ten or after twelve or after four.

But football has always been an expression of society as a whole. The sport directors are also under enormous pressure. It's madness. Because the connections are missing. Social media...the club loses two, three games. And then people lose their minds and spread things on social media, it's terrible. That wouldn't have happened in the past. Not to this extent atleast. Not that people were any better before. Not one bit. We weren't better, not at all. And there were much worse times than now, 80 years ago and before. But the reference points are missing. If you know someone personally, you think about it before insulting them. Saying something directly to someone's face, that's becoming less and less. That's one reason why with us...(I mean we're also a comapny, if we are honest. That doesn't sound all that nice because we are a football club. But we are also a company)...that's one reason why with us it's not like that. Because we have continuity, because we have connections. But I've already said it. The crucial point in our club will be how we deal with this growth. Whether we are able to meet and mentally deal with each other.

In the areas where that is not the case, things are going downhill. Sure, there are huge corporations these days...the small companies pay all their taxes and that's of course right. Because they have to support society. But the mega-corporations hardly pay any taxes and when they are supposed to pay taxes, they change countries and blackmail the countries. This is the situation. This is neo-capitalism. We live in neo-capitalism. And neo-capitalism destroys. That is my personal opinion. Of course, I am only a football coach. But since you asked me, I am giving you an answer.

 

I love this man. 

[Viva la FCB+]

Thats quite the answer. Hes bang on as usual.

Ill leave this here as well. Bit of context Musiala appeared to snub Streich in the cup loss earlier in the week.. understandably he was upset giving away the pivotal penalty in the dieing minutes but he stepped up and apologized and the two shared a genuine embrace at the end of the match on the weekend. Apparently the kit is for Streich's kid.. he doesnt really collect them himself he said  

[Tommy]

I know not many of you have a 11Freunde subscription,  but I just read another interview with him that has me convinced that he is one of the greatest human beings on this planet. 

 

https://11freunde.de/artikel/christian-streich-interview/9367147

[Rucksackfranzose]

Just read Streich will decide next week whether he'll continue as a Freiburg manager or retires after the season. Would be a big loss not only for them but the whole league, if he choose the latter option.

[Coma+]

1 hour ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

Just read Streich will decide next week whether he'll continue as a Freiburg manager or retires after the season. Would be a big loss not only for them but the whole league, if he choose the latter option.

Unhappy face.

[Rucksackfranzose]

11 minutes ago, Coma said:

Unhappy face.

That could be the disappointement with yesterday's match only, as well.

Edited March 15 by Rucksackfranzose

[Tommy]

Christian Streich is leaving Freiburg at the end of the season.

End of an era.

[Tommy]

This man will be missed. A streaker who wanted to personally say goodbye to Christian Streich had been subdued by security, but Streich intervenes to give him a hug. 

[Viva la FCB+]

13 minutes ago, Tommy said:

This man will be missed. A streaker who wanted to personally say goodbye to Christian Streich had been subdued by security, but Streich intervenes to give him a hug. 

I assumed streaker meant he was naked and yet I clicked on.... but thats a great moment. What a man. 

[Tommy]

11 minutes ago, Viva la FCB said:

I assumed streaker meant he was naked and yet I clicked on.... but thats a great moment. What a man. 

Yea, pitch invader would have been a better word, I guess. 

[Rucksackfranzose]

Christian Streich received this years Walther-Bensemann-Preis, which is an award for special services to football and its social significance and relevance in Germany, and generally. Former prize winners include eg Alfredo di Stefano, Bobby Charlton, and Franz Beckenbauer. This prize is well deserved, if not overdue, although it is commonly awarded to retired persons.

Edit: Since this is a predominantly British forum, it should be mentioned there was a second prize winner with UK citizenship: Sir Alex Ferguson.

Edited October 14 by Rucksackfranzose