Freiburg II

Freiburg's second team travels for what the away support long ago dubbed the Badisches Derby, meetings with SV Sandhausen and SV Waldhof Mannheim that carry a regional weight no fixture list can manufacture. There is no other name for the side to fight over; the shirts are red and white, the same as upstairs, and even the identity as "II" only settled once the German Football League ordered reserve sides to carry the suffix — before that, until 2005-06, it played as SC Freiburg Amateure.

The team has existed since the parent club itself formed in 1904, but for a hundred years it stayed below the third tier, winning regional honours such as the Verbandsliga Südbaden in 1998 and the Oberliga Baden-Württemberg twice, in 2008 and 2017. In 2014 it finished second in the Regionalliga Südwest and turned down the promotion play-off, choosing to stay put rather than gamble on the step up. That caution did not last: in 2020-21 it won the Regionalliga Südwest outright and reached the 3. Liga for the first time. Two seasons later it went further still, finishing runner-up in the third tier, the best league placing the club has recorded.

What keeps the shirt relevant is who wears it on the way through. Kevin Schade came out of this side before his move to Brentford, and Julian Schuster played here on his way to the first-team dugout, where he later took over as head coach — the kind of path that gives the reserve side its real purpose, feeding players and occasionally a manager upward rather than building a history of its own.

Freiburg II shares its ground with the first team, the Dreisamstadion, known locally as the Möslestadion, which holds around 24,000. There is no separate crowd for the second side, no chant reserved for it alone — on matchday it borrows the city's attention rather than commanding its own.