Suzuki Seals It as Flying Freiburg Climb Back to Third With 2-0 Win Over Union Berlin

There are afternoons when a football team does everything right and still has nothing to show for it, and for 55 minutes on Sunday that looked like Freiburg's story. Union Berlin's Frederik Rønnow was having one of those days in goal, the chances kept coming and going, and the home crowd at Europa-Park Stadion was starting to wonder if this was going to be one of those frustrating draws that quietly derails a good season.

Then Niklas Beste whipped a low cross in from the left, Union captain Rani Khedira stretched to cut it out, and the ball ended up in his own net. It was not pretty. Nobody in black and red cared.

Twelve minutes later the win was sealed, and this time there was nothing fortunate about it. Derry Scherhant won the ball high up the pitch, drove through the middle and slipped it to Yuito Suzuki, who lifted a delicate finish over the onrushing Rønnow. Two-nil, game over, and Freiburg were back in third place.

Suzuki was the story of the afternoon, really. The Japanese international was involved in both goals — it was his ball that found Beste for the cross that forced the own goal — and the Bundesliga named him man of the match. His strike was his fifth league goal of the season, already one more than he managed in the whole of last term, and it came from one of those afternoons where a player just keeps finding the right spaces. Scherhant and Suzuki had both gone close just after the restart, Suzuki lacing one into the side netting from close range, and you could feel the goal coming before it arrived.

What makes this Freiburg side worth watching is how relentlessly they have kept pace. Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund had both won earlier in the weekend, RB Leipzig had moved above them, and the pressure was on Julian Schuster's team to respond. They did, and the numbers behind it are striking: six wins from nine league games, four straight victories in all competitions, and 20 goals scored — an average of 2.22 a game, up from 1.50 last season. Only Bayern, on 29, and Leipzig, on 27, have scored more.

It was not all smooth. Captain Vincenzo Grifo missed a penalty along the way, and for a long stretch Rønnow looked like he might single-handedly hold Freiburg out. But Schuster's side kept coming, kept pressing, and eventually the dam broke. That is becoming a habit with this team.

Freiburg have never finished higher than third in the Bundesliga, and nobody around the club is getting carried away in November. But they go into the international break sitting third on 19 points, two behind leaders Bayern, and with a trip to promoted Elversberg waiting on the other side. For a club of Freiburg's size, that is not a bad place to be dreaming from.