Marked for Valentin Gendrey
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom1 Mar 2027
Pressure builds in the TSG Hoffenheim boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Squad1 Mar 2027
491 appearances across 11 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and TSG Hoffenheim know what they have.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Oliver Baumann and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Market1 Mar 2027
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Valentin Gendrey wants continental football; whether TSG Hoffenheim can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 19. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Ansgar Knauff falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Match27 Feb 2027
0‑1 to Borussia Dortmund, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad1 Mar 2027
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at TSG Hoffenheim can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
The dugout1 Mar 2027
A promise honoured for Bernardo
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. TSG Hoffenheim told Bernardo something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
In brief
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The dugout
Georg Kraus faces the questions
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The dugout
The manager makes an example of Jota
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Market
Luka Đurić returns from a loan that gave him nothing
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings22 Feb 2027
A brace, and Fisnik Asllani takes the afternoon — 9.09
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Fisnik Asllani provided it, and the 9.09 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Market22 Feb 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Player ratings22 Feb 2027
Vladimír Coufal, 34, rolls back the years — 8.00
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.00 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Player ratings22 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 23. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Oliver Baumann was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Market22 Feb 2027
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Ansgar Knauff wants continental football; whether TSG Hoffenheim can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Words at TSG Hoffenheim training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ansgar Knauff is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Loan watch22 Feb 2027
Luca Philipp’s loan is measured in nothing happening
11 clean sheets from 25 appearances at Heidenheim. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad28 Dec 2026
A fracture rules Keisuke Osako out for 26 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason TSG Hoffenheim will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
No sign of nerves from Max Moerstedt at 20 — 7.70
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Max Moerstedt did not need any: 7.70, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Andrej Kramarić, 35, rolls back the years — 8.21
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.21 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The dugout28 Dec 2026
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Adam Daghim beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 23. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Oliver Baumann was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The terraces28 Dec 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Max Moerstedt has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Market28 Dec 2026
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad2 Nov 2026
Keisuke Osako breaks a bone — 88 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 88 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
Vladimír Coufal: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” TSG Hoffenheim have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 24. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Market2 Nov 2026
Bernardo wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at TSG Hoffenheim hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Oliver Baumann was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Market2 Nov 2026
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Match31 Oct 2026
Borussia Dortmund left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
The manager makes an example of Leon Avdullahu
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
A promise honoured for Bernardo
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. TSG Hoffenheim told Bernardo something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match10 Oct 2026
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 25. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Oliver Baumann and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Market12 Oct 2026
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Leon Möller has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Match10 Oct 2026
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad12 Oct 2026
With 6 players away on international duty the sessions are small and the manager can actually hear himself. It is the one break in the season, and it never quite feels like one.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Robin Hranáč
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Loan watch12 Oct 2026
“I did not go to Heidenheim to sit and watch. I want to come back to TSG Hoffenheim and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 5 matches say the rest.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Georg Kraus left the room before anybody could ask which.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
TSG Hoffenheim ran out of time with Köln. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Window shuts: 19 in, 4 out at TSG Hoffenheim
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 19 arrived, 4 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Oliver Baumann was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Match5 Sep 2026
0‑1 to RB Leipzig, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad7 Sep 2026
5 call-ups is a compliment to the squad and a headache for the man running it. He will get them back in a fortnight, tired, in various states of repair.
Squad7 Sep 2026
9 new faces, and TSG Hoffenheim are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.