Patience pays off for Freiburg during Union win
Freiburg boss Julian Schuster insisted his team had to remain patient before finally getting the goals its performance merited against Union Berlin.
Schuster watched on as his team extended its winning run across all competitions to four matches with a 2-0 victory at Europa-Park Stadion.
But Freiburg had to wait until the 55th minute to open the scoring, when Union captain Rani Khedira turned Niklas Beste's cross beyond Frederik Ronnow and into his own net.
Yuito Suzuki doubled Freiburg's advantage 12 minutes later, and the hosts could have added further gloss to the scoreline late on, but Vincenzo Grifo saw his penalty saved.
Freiburg has 19 points after nine matches, the joint-best start to a Bundesliga season in its club history, matching its tally at this stage in 2021-2022, with the gap between them and leaders Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund standing at two points heading into the international break.
However, it did not have things all its own way, with the host frustrated in the first half.
But Schuster was pleased with the way his side maintained the pressure on the Union goal, while also lauding his defence, which restricted Union to just four shots that generated a combined expected goals value of only 0.35.
"We had to be very patient, but we never lost confidence. We didn't create a huge number of chances, but we gave very little away ourselves," Schuster said.
Freiburg's victory also saw it end its longest winless run against Union in all competitions, having failed to win any of its previous seven meetings against it.
"It's nice to go into the international break with a win. It's a good feeling," Eggestein said. "That was exactly how we expected Union to play."
