His blunder in the first half of the season hurt Mark Flekken, but has long been over. Before the second leg at BVB, the keeper is in a good mood again. The lousy record in Dortmund also encourages the SC.
Freiburg (dpa / lsw) – This time the motivation at SC Freiburg before the away game at Borussia Dortmund (Saturday, 3.30 p.m. / Sky) is particularly high. Not only because the Badeners have never won in the Bundesliga under Christian Streich at BVB and the coach would like to improve this “terrible record”, as he emphasized on Thursday. The first leg also stimulates the SC. Of the only three defeats that Freiburg suffered in the first half of the season up to mid-November, the 3-1 draw against Dortmund on the second day of the game annoyed them the most – especially goalkeeper Mark Flekken.
The 29-year-old was particularly struggling “because the defeat started with the ball slipping through my hands”. His mistake at 1-1 was “quite a shock for the team” because we were great in the game and had the opportunity to win it,” said Flekken. Sport-Club led until the keeper made a mistake in the 77th minute and dominated the game for long stretches. “This defeat was clearly my fault and it hurt for a day or two,” said Flekken in retrospect.
The Dutchman then coped with the setback just as well as the rest of the team. The SC then won three games in a row because the team “draw good conclusions and drew a lot of strength from the bankruptcy against BVB”, as coach Streich explained a good five months later. Flekken has “repeatedly had to deal with setbacks in recent years, and he has developed stability, including mentally,” said the SC coach. That helped him after the blunder against Dortmund and also after the surprising non-nomination for the Winter World Cup in Qatar. Flekken was “full of disbelief” about them, as he said: “I wasn’t disappointed, I was angry.”
But that is also ticked off. The goalkeeper is hoping to be included in the next Dutch national team call-up in March. “I really hope that he will be invited again,” said Streich, “and I hope that we’ll see Mark play many more games with us because he’s in exactly the right place here.”
In the home win against FC Augsburg last weekend, the goalkeeper prevented the 2-2 win against ex-Freiburger Ermedin Demirovic with a brilliant save shortly before the end and thus played a major role in the later 3-1 win. This should give the team the necessary lightness for the away game in Dortmund. Where Streich polish up his miserable record of one point and 6:34 goals from the previous ten games – and Flekken wants to make his mistake from the first leg forgotten.
