The young goalkeeper had earlier kept Freiburg in the game with an important penalty save, but his stoppage-time error allowed Mario Dorgeles to score the winner at the Estadio Municipal de Braga.

Braga took the lead inside the opening 10 minutes when Demir Ege Tiknaz finished from close range after Freiburg failed to clear a dangerous cross. The German side struggled early on, but they responded well and levelled through Vincenzo Grifo after excellent work from Jan-Niklas Beste.

Grifo calmly converted from close range to score his sixth European goal of the season and give Freiburg hope before half-time.

Atubolu then produced one of the key moments of the match when he denied former Bundesliga midfielder Rodrigo Zalazar from the penalty spot in stoppage time of the first half. The Freiburg goalkeeper reacted quickly to dive to his right after Philipp Lienhart was penalised following a VAR review.

Despite the save, Atubolu's night ended in disappointment when he failed to deal cleanly with Vitor Carvalho's effort deep into stoppage time. The rebound fell perfectly for Dorgeles, who fired home to give Braga a narrow advantage ahead of next week's second leg in Germany.

"The problem was that I didn't see the ball," Atubolu told reporters after the match.

"I think Philipp Lienhart was almost in front of me or next to me."

Freiburg coach Julian Schuster admitted his side failed to defend key moments properly and felt they were punished for small mistakes.

"We didn't defend well in the few moments that we were punished," Schuster said.

"We can do that better, and we have to do better."

The result gave Braga their first-ever European knockout win against German opposition and left Freiburg with work to do in the return leg next week.

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