Austerity is a bit of a UK buzzword these days and there were certainly elements of it in my first season’s transfer dealings. By these levels, the summer of 2023 was a relative land of milk and honey for SC Freiburg where transfers are concerned. A massive 7 (SEVEN, for some reason seven is the number we start exclaiming by writing the numbers in brackets) players arrived at the doors of Europa-Park Stadion.
That’s right, it’s mass screenshot time!
The first confirmed signing was confirming the option to purchase Matteo Ruggeri from Atalanta for the agreed price of £2.7m. Ruggeri is Christian Günter’s obvious successor when the time eventually comes. He made a total of 37 appearances last season on loan - although only 9 of them from a starting berth. It felt obvious that I would enact the agreed future fee clause.
Following Ruggeri into the fold in a double opening day of the window swoop were Matteo Gabbia (Milan, £2.4m) and - seemingly FM23’s answer to Anel Ahmedhodzic since everyone seems to be signing him on the cheap - Isshaku Abdul Fatawu (Sporting CP, £1.5m). Gabbia is another of my signings from a previous save and Fatawu’s potential for that price simply couldn’t be ignored.
Barcelona’s young midfield talent Nico was a loan that I simply couldn’t believe we were able to make happen. He’s costing £1.6m for the loan and £11k per week in wages. An optional future fee of £22.5m has been agreed although the biggest stumbling block on that will potentially be whether or not he feels we are at his level for a permanent move.
Roberto Gagliardini was a free signing following his release from Inter Milan. I have to be honest in showing my ignorance here but I had no idea who he was and couldn’t believe he’d amassed so many Inter appearances… Regardless, he fits in very nicely to the Half Back DM slot, showing excellent ratings in some of my favoured Mental attributes (Determination, Teamwork and Work Rate).
I closed out the summer window with two deadline day signings. 21 year old Felix Gebhardt (Basel, £1m) was brought in to be a backup to Mark Flekken with the bonus that signing a German national pleased the fans. Alexandre Azevedo (VfB Stuttgart) was loaned due to Matteo Ruggeri picking up an early season injury - don’t expect to hear too much about him though as Stuttgart recalled him in November due to his lack of game time.
From the first team, there were three players released at the end of last season when their contracts expired: Lukas Kübler, Benjamin Uphoff and Nicolas Höfler. Kübler suffered a cruciate ligament injury last year and his 7 months out never really gave him the chance to break into my squad. Uphoff wasn’t content at renewing his contract to be a back up goalkeeper. Höfler never really impressed me last season and when he asked for triple his current wages on renewal, I was more than happy to ship him out.
On top of this, there were three first team departures during the window. Young midfielder Yannik Keitel left for Watford (£1.2m), Lucas Höler went to moneybags Hoffenheim (£4M) but without doubt the biggest name to go was Maximillian Eggestein. West Ham’s offer (£17m) was too good for me to turn down and Maxi was keen to go. I think I’ve replaced him well with Nico for this season at least.
As ever, we start with the briefest of pre-season updates. Five games played including a tour to USA. Three wins, a loss and a draw. Nine goals scored, three conceded, three clean sheets.
We were in Europa Conference League action this season and put Gil Vicente aside in the fourth qualifying round for the group stage. A 3-1 win in the first leg should have meant the tie was done and dusted, even moreso when we took a 2-0 lead into half time of the second leg. Gil Vicente came roaring back with goals in the 80th, 82nd and 89th minutes to set up a nervy finish with us narrowly leading the tie on aggregate (5-4) before Daniel-Kofi Kyereh’s 90+4 minute goal sealed progression.
Paired with Sion, Shkëndija and SK Rapid Vienna in the group stage, we made light work of the table as expected. Eight different goalscorers showed we are no slouches at creating chances (ignoring the strength of the opposition) as we eased to five straight wins before a heavily rotated side lost to Sion in what was a dead rubber for us. Topping the group, we await the news of who we face in the Round of 16.
We’ve made it through to the third round of the DFB-Pokal after a simple away win over lower league opposition Bayern Hof and an impressive 2-0 victory against Bayer Leverkusen. We’ll play Union Berlin in the next round in February - it was Union’s city rivals Hertha Berlin that knocked us out at the same stage last season.
It was a rocky start to the league season with the opening day win against Leverkusen followed by a draw with Union Berlin then a heavy defeat to Borussia Dortmund. An excellent recovery against Hoffenheim preceded a bounce back to solid earth away to Leipzig. We closed out the month of September with back to back wins against Gladbach and Frankfurt respectively. Kevin Schade was already showing signs of that form that made him my undisputable first choice striker in the later part of last season.
October and November was a return to poor form, the Wolfsburg result was respectable and we’d have taken a point against Bayern if it hadn’t been for throwing away an early two-goal lead. What followed was three successive blanks drawn in very, very poor performances.
A return to positives coincided well with Kevin Schade’s return to the scoresheet. His seven goals in the next four games helping to secure a vital 12 points for Freiburg. 2023 ended with a hard battling win over Hamburg with the winning goal from a sweetly struck Fatawu volley from 20 yards.
At the halfway point of the season, Freiburg occupy 5th place in the Bundesliga - level on points with Dortmund but dropping a spot due to scoring three goals fewer than Der BVB.
Since the start of this save, I’ve had two training ground upgrades completed (taking us to a maximum rated State of the art set up) and one to the youth facilities (now graded as Excellent). The board are now denying any further youth facility upgrades so the next step for me will be to pursue upgrades to the Junior Coaching (currently: Excellent) and Youth Recruitment (currently: Good).
At the end of November the Freiburg presidential elections were completed. Armin Rahb was the winner and came in with no big changes to how we operate aside from one change to board objectives - Spend the original transfer budget. We spent just over £9m in the summer and the original budget was £20.3m so it’s far from an unrealistic target to reach. The current budget is actually closed to the £32m mark currently, although I’d rather alter things and potentially put more of that into the wage budget.
With the above in mind, there will be plenty to think about in January. Things are starting to click with the side I have, so I don’t want to tinker too much. The problem is that my hand may be forced at some point with transfer interest in several first team players, including Matthias Ginter, Phillip Lienhart (both West Ham), Woo-yeong Jeong (RB Leipzig) and Kevin Schade who has 19 goals in 22 appearances so far this season (11 clubs including Real Madrid and Juventus).
I have one or two targets in mind, although I’m not sure I will be able to convince them to make the permanent move just yet so we may look towards a loan or two - you can almost certainly bet they’ll have been involved in a fmadventure save previously too :)