SC Freiburg in the Europa League: On the road with seven league boots

AIn the old pictures, Edgar Davids sometimes looks like a racing cyclist, sometimes like a swimmer when the glasses frame his eyes particularly closely. But Davids, his wild dreadlocked mane tamed with a rubber band, was not one to go into hiding, rather someone who struggled and struggled to make it to the top as a footballer. And Davids, born in Suriname and raised in Amsterdam, made it to the top as a footballer. With Ajax he won championships, the UEFA Cup and the Champions League. He later played for Milan, Juventus and six months for the ball artists from Barcelona, ​​who dedicated themselves to the beauty of the game. But Davids’ world was different. They called him Pitbull.

When Davids was at his best, in the mid to late nineties and early noughties, Johan Manzambi wasn’t even born yet. For this reason alone, Klemens Hartenbach doesn’t really want to get involved in the comparison between Davids, yesterday’s world star, and Manzambi, the greatest talent that SC Freiburg has in its squad today.

It was a different time, says Hartenbach. You can tell that he doesn’t want to provide any quick assists for headlines. Loud roars and sounds are far from their minds in the Black Forest – but Freiburg’s sports director admits one thing: “If you had made a heat map for Edgar Davids back then, it would probably have looked similar to Johan’s.”

When SC Freiburg meets Celta Vigo, Spain’s sixth-placed side, this Thursday evening, Manzambi will also step onto the biggest stage he has ever stood on: Europa League, quarter-finals, Davids’ spheres so close that they can be clearly seen even without glasses. And Manzambi, 20, doesn’t need glasses to see through and stand out anyway. On good days he can be an event with his expansive style, his seven-league boots, the explosiveness and anarchy in his game.

Sport is a show, at least these days, long after the David era, and that’s why we always need the next big thing and then the next and the next. According to this logic, it could now be Johan Manzambi’s turn, an exceptional Freiburg talent, Swiss national player, market value already at 35 million euros and rising.

Coming to Freiburg from Servette Geneva in January 2023, Manzambi came into the spotlight a year ago when he scored two goals and assisted two in the last six games of the 2024/25 Bundesliga season. Murat Yakin, Switzerland’s national coach, then got in touch – and in June, in his second international match, the first ever from the start, Manzambi made a name for himself again with a goal and an assist. A career in fast motion, can a rise be faster?

When playing forward, he brings the brutal into contact with the delicate

A year later, it’s hard to imagine Freiburg’s team without Manzambi. “Johan has a mixture of carefreeness, not being afraid of anything and footballing quality,” says Hartenbach. Basically, Manzambi is an “offensive-minded midfielder”, but now “he is enriching that more and more with defensive responsibility”. And when playing forward, he brings the brutal into contact with the delicate, the powerful with the emotional. Sometimes you see him stroking the ball with the sole of his shoe, sometimes nailing it under the crossbar. This was also the case last Saturday, in this memorable game against FC Bayern. 2:1 for Freiburg after 90 minutes, 2:3 after 99, and of course afterwards everyone talked about the comeback Bayern and their inimitable greed. The stoppage time outshone everything, but until then Manzambi had been one of the most noticeable on the entire field. When he left the field it was 2-0 for Freiburg. Then he couldn’t do anything anymore and the sports club was already in trouble.

When Hartenbach was asked to explain a few days later where Manzambi’s path could one day lead, he did not want to join in with the hymns that had been sung to the youngster in recent months. Vincenzo Grifo, one of his teammates, had spoken of trusting Manzambi to become “a really, really great” and the Swiss national coach Yakin celebrated him for his “incredible desire to score, which I have rarely seen in a player”. Hartenbach now says: “I don’t want to praise him away.” But Freiburg’s sports director also knows: If the big clubs didn’t have someone like Johan Manzambi on their list, then who would they?

Manzambi is still just small enough for Breisgau. Sometimes he’s not up to par defensively, sometimes his game has a bit of an impetuous quality to it. He has already seen red twice this season. Basically, he is currently on the fast track to outgrowing the sports club. His contract runs until 2030, but people in Breisgau already suspect that the midfielder will probably not end his career in Freiburg.

The fact that Johan Manzambi lives in the here and now and is not yet thinking about Milan, Juventus and Barcelona becomes clear when Hartenbach says the beautiful sentence: “If a friend has ridden his bike somewhere and lost the key and therefore can’t get away, he can call Johan. He’ll get him!”