How are Mainz and Freiburg pushing for UEFA Champions League qualification?
Both Mainz and Freiburg have consistently defied the odds over the 2024/25 campaign to be finely poised for attaining the coveted qualification for next season's instalment of the UEFA Champions League. Ahead of their clash on Matchday 26, bundesliga.com takes a closer look at how they have found themselves in this position...
Unparalleled form
In third place, Mainz are right up near the top of the table and qualifying for the Champions League is becoming an ever increasingly realistic dream. With 44 points after 25 matchdays, the 05ers have their best points tally at this stage of the season in the club's history. What a difference a year makes when you consider Mainz’s 16 points after 25 matchdays last campaign was, by contrast, their weakest ever return. Bo Henriksen has managed to turn a team that was almost relegated into a prime contender for Champions League qualification.
Victory away at Borussia Mönchengladbach means that Mainz have just won four Bundesliga games in a row within a single season for only the third time in their history. Previously, this had only been achieved at the start of 2023 under Bo Svensson (four wins) and at the start of the 2010/11 season under current England boss Thomas Tuchel (seven wins). If they can manage another win against fellow high-fliers Freiburg at the weekend, the 05ers will be five points clear of fifth place at least, and in with a serious shot at playing in Europe’s elite club competition.
Watch: Borussia Mönchengladbach 1-3 Mainz - highlights
In a similarly rich vein of form, fifth-placed Freiburg are unbeaten in their last six Bundesliga games (four wins, two draws) which is their longest run in almost two years and their longest outright under Julian Schuster. With 41 points, the Black Forest club are right in the thick of the race for the European places, having already nearly surpassed their points tally for the entirety of last season (42).
Despite having maintained a negative goal difference since Matchday 15 (currently on -2), Freiburg remain very much in contention for the European places. Historically, no team has ever made it into the top four by the end of the season with more goals conceded than goals scored - the best final position ever achieved by a side with a negative goal difference was fifth place, which has been done by only three teams in top flight history: Borussia Dortmund (1970, -7), Hamburg (1971, -9) and most recently Kaiserslautern (2000, -5). However, Freiburg have consistently looked to break the mould this season, so who's to say they can't set another record?
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Goaded by great goalkeepers
Both sides pride themselves on a solid defensive foundation, but Mainz can boast the second-best defensive record in the league, having conceded just 26 goals; a club record at this stage after 25 matchdays. Furthermore, in 2025 alone, Mainz have conceded the fewest goals with six – four fewer than league leaders Bayern Munich.
This could be down to the 'Robin Zentner effect’, with the Mainz keeper saving 76 percent of his opponents' shots on goal (the best figure among all Bundesliga keepers with at least 11 appearances this season). Additionally, Zentner has saved the third most shots on goal in the league (83) behind only Timon Weiner and Kevin Müller at relegation candidates Holstein Kiel and Heidenheim – both clubs at which the respective first-choice goalkeeper is bound to be under fire.
Watch: Robin Zentner's top 5 saves in 2024/25
Similarly, much of Freiburg's success of late can be attributed to the strength of their defence as a unit, combined with that of their outstanding goalkeeper. The Black Forest club have not conceded a single goal in their last six Bundesliga games, setting a new club record. Only six clubs have ever managed to keep the same number of clean sheets in a row (some more than once), though the record is held by VfB Stuttgart, having once gone without conceding in nine consecutive games.
Talented young goalkeeper Noah Atubolu has gone 576 minutes (nearly 10 hours) without conceding a goal, the last of which came at the end of January against Bayern (from Minjae Kim). The old club record of 509 minutes was held by Richard Golz. The Germany U21 international also gained notoriety earlier in the season after a penalty save on Matchday 23 in a 5-0 thrashing of Bremen led him to equal a Bundesliga record, as it was his fourth consecutive penalty save in the league.
Watch: Noah Atubolu's penalty heroics for Freiburg
Goals made in midfield
Aside from the boost provided from free-scoring striker Jonathan Burkardt, Mainz’s midfield has come up trumps on multiple occasions. In fact, Nadiem Amiri, Paul Nebel, Jae-sung Lee & Co. make up Mainz’s most lucrative midfield in terms of goalscoring in their Bundesliga history, with the 22 goals plundered by midfielders a club record after 25 matchdays. Only the midfield players of Bayern (40, i.e. the likes of Jamal Musiala and Michael Olise) and Bayer Leverkusen (25) have contributed more goals in the league.
Whilst only nine different players have found the back of the net for the 05ers this season (no team has fewer), four of those have each scored in excess of five goals (Burkardt, Nebel, Lee, Amiri). The only other club at which this is also the case is league leaders Bayern.
Watch: Mainz's top-four push under the microscope
Amiri has been directly or indirectly involved in five of Mainz's last seven goals. The 28-year-old has scored six in this Bundesliga season, a new personal record. But that's not all. Amiri has taken the most shots on goal at Mainz (46) and provided the most key passes (37). This rich form recently earned the 28-year-old a call-up from Julian Nagelsmann for the UEFA Nations League quarter-final clash against Italy; his first international call-up in over four years.
Nebel recently scored his seventh goal of the season in Gladbach, making him Mainz's sole second-top scorer. This means the talented youngster has already netted more goals this term than in his two years on loan at Karlsruhe in Bundesliga 2 (five and four goals in each season, respectively). Nebel has also impressed with his tireless workrate. With an average of 12.8 kilometres per 90 minutes, he is Mainz's marathon man. Last weekend in Mönchengladbach alone, he ran 13.6 kilometres, which was further than any other player in the league in a single match this season.
In much the same way, Freiburg's strength in midfield has been a crucial component in their formula for success this season. In fact, the two joint-top scorers at the Black Forest club with eight goals apiece this season are Vincenzo Grifo and Ritsu Dōan. Grifo has also registered seven assists and is Freiburg's sole top provider, while Dōan is second with his own very respectable four assists.
Grifo's 54 shots on goal and 47 key passes are also the best figures at the club. Additionally, his ratio of corners taken to those resulting in goals is 5:1 - the outright best in the Bundesliga. For Dōan, eight goals this season is already a new personal Bundesliga record. Five of his eight have given Freiburg the lead, having scored the opening goal of a game on four separate occasions (twice as often as any other Freiburg player).
On the flip side, however, Mainz seem to be something of a bogey team for Grifo. In 15 Bundesliga matches against the 05ers, he has only scored once (in November 2016), having failed to score in the last 13 matches against the Carnival club.
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