Christian Streich had to be 59 years old before he was able to marvel at Nuremberg in all its historic splendor for the first time. And that despite the fact that he had “already been there 50 times” before. As a coach, you only ever see the team hotel and the stadium. And sometimes I miss something more important, said Streich, who enjoyed a historical city tour with his wife. As the evening progressed, serious doubts would arise as to whether the man known as a man of duty would ever be so completely absorbed in his self-imposed idleness. He’s enjoying the fact that he can now see more than hotel rooms and changing rooms in cities like Nuremberg. And he also enjoyed the bike tour that recently took him with a friend from Alsace over the Pyrenees to Bilbao. And the awards ceremony that took place on Friday evening, too. Anyway.
In any case, a good hour after the end of the “Academy for Football Culture” gala celebration, he left the Tafelhalle heavily laden. Under his arm, the long-time coach of SC Freiburg held two heavy wooden figures, stylized kickers named “Max”. He got one of them for the football saying of the year, which he shared with Horst Hrubesch (“With our quality, it makes no sense to close games.” lose.”) shares. And one as a symbol of the “Walther Bensemann Prize”, with which the jury awards the “Personality of the Year”.
:The DFB and the secret church photo
An email, a photo and an enormous suspicion: The DFB is investigating the question of whether its former vice president Rainer Koch played foul play for years surrounding the “Summer Fairy Tale” affair.
The one after that kicker-Founder Walther Bensemann also gave Streich the main prize because of his commitment against right-wing extremism and intolerance: “He was the clearest voice in football against the anti-democratic forces in our country,” praised kicker-Editor-in-chief Jörg Jakob. “This strange guy with the Alemannic dialect” was an “outstanding guy who recognized and named the undesirable developments in the industry without appearing to be a loudspeaker or a know-it-all.” Jakob then also highlighted Streich’s “smart and genuine manner,” but also left it alone understand that this is exactly what led to angry letters to the editor when the editorial team (as happened in 2022) named him “Trainer of the Year”. Of all people, says the tenor, Streich, who with his impulsive nature on the sidelines really isn’t a role model?
After all, Streich was often shocked when he saw himself on television. Those derailed facial features, the anger in his eyes – he didn’t actually want to see any of that himself. For the jury, however, all of this was negligible anyway. Who needs an etiquette trainer when the AfD is taking the state parliaments by storm? And still too few celebrities say sentences, as Streich put it, than the research network Correctiv reported in January about AfD hardliners’ “remigration” plans: “Anyone who doesn’t understand it now didn’t understand anything in school when history was taught.” When the sentence was quoted, there was thunderous applause. There was an embarrassed silence when David Zabel (Initiative Black People in Germany), who gave the laudatory speech for Ronny Blaschke’s award-winning book “Playfield of the Gentlemen”, accused the well-meaning milieu of saying that as a predominantly white audience, they did not reflect on their own privileges.
Streich cannot imagine returning to football at the moment
On the home stretch of the evening things became more cheerful again. It became clear that Streich has not yet completely succeeded in making the transition from Bundesliga coach to privateer. When asked what he had done since May 18, 2024, his last game as coach, he said – “I wonder that too sometimes” – causing laughter for the first time. In any case, it is not easy for him to have 24 hours a day to do things freely: “The structure is gone.” For the past three decades he has “knew every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday what I had to do, namely go to work. Now I’m in some interesting states.” You have to “design everything yourself, think about what you’re doing, you have to be able to deal with it if you’re running around in the forest at ten on a Monday morning. If you have a lot of options, that doesn’t mean you choose the right ones. That takes time.” He obviously wants to take that time.
In any case, the most frequently asked question in the audience’s discussions remained unanswered. Will Streich take on a coaching job again at some point? However, his last sentence of the evening suggests that he doesn’t plan to do that for the time being: “Now I hope that I can find other things besides football where I can learn something and not always just say: I can’t do that and I can do that I don’t.”