Marked for Valentin Gendrey
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.32, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Match12 Dec 2026
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
The terraces14 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.
Match12 Dec 2026
A 2‑0 win over Mainz 05, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad14 Dec 2026
200 times in these colours, in all weathers and under four or five different managers. That kind of service is quietly disappearing from the game.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Defensive actions: 19, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Jackson Irvine 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.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
16 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad16 Nov 2026
Oliver Baumann and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match14 Nov 2026
0‑1 to Union Berlin, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad16 Nov 2026
7 TSG Hoffenheim players away with their countries
The training ground goes quiet for a fortnight. 7 men have gone off to be somebody else’s players, and the manager is left with the ones nobody has called.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
The manager makes an example of Max Moerstedt
“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.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Ihlas Bebou beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 16. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
The dugout16 Nov 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 Uwe Keller left the room before anybody could ask which.
Market16 Nov 2026
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Valentin Gendrey has his answer from TSG Hoffenheim; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Market16 Nov 2026
The Bernardo talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. TSG Hoffenheim know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Looking ahead16 Nov 2026
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Patrick Wimmer’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and TSG Hoffenheim needing him to play as if none of it matters.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
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.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Andrej Kramarić, 35, rolls back the years — 8.09
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.09 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 11 signed and 2 gone
That is the business done at TSG Hoffenheim until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Squad7 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at TSG Hoffenheim this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match5 Sep 2026
RB Leipzig held the lead for 1 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. TSG Hoffenheim answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
Market7 Sep 2026
Jackson Irvine is 33 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
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
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Match5 Sep 2026
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.