SC Freiburg have informed the German Football League that they will play every remaining fixture of the season with nine men, and in the final ten minutes of each match with eight, after concluding that their 2:1 victory over Schalke 04 while a man down was «not a handicap but a business model».
The club has already begun construction of a permanent ninth-man exclusion zone at the Europa-Park Stadion: a covered bench, a small desk and a red card mounted on a plinth, where the voluntarily dismissed player must sit for the full ninety minutes and file a written apology to the crowd. Season-ticket holders voted overwhelmingly to keep the seat empty forever.
Head coach Julian Schuster said the squad had accepted the plan «without a single objection, because nobody wanted to be the one who asked why». He confirmed that the club now trains eleven against nine every Tuesday and Thursday, and that the spare players spend the sessions running laps around the outside of the pitch «so they understand what they are missing».
Schalke, for their part, have requested that their own next match also be played nine against eleven, on the grounds that «it is the only way anyone will watch us». The league has approved the request and moved the kick-off to a larger stadium to accommodate demand.