Hoffenheim's Vedad Ibisevic, Carlos Eduardo and Luiz Gustavo put on their football boots.

(Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)

Who will steal Cristiano Ronaldo's crown as Europe's top goal scorer?

According to Justin Rodriguez at ESPN (click here for the original article and all the details), Gyau (16) and Renken (15) have signed multi-year contracts with Bundesliga upstarts 1899 Hoffenheim. Some quotes that should encourage US fans and allay concerns of player development are:
"The key to the decision made by the boys and their families is that Hoffenheim constructed an outstanding path for their development as players," Segal said.

Bundesliga side TSG 1899 Hoffenheim, who lead the league at the winter break, have revealed their new 2009-10 home and away shirts. The new Hoffenheim trikots ( shirts) are manufactured by Puma, and are available to buy for a price of €69.95. The home shirt is primarily blue in colour, while the away outfit is white.

TSG 1899 Hoffenheim have signed Brazilian midfielder Maicosuel for a fee of €5.4 million. The 22 year old attacking midfielder was on loan at Botafago, and was the best player in the Rio de Janeiro State Championship. Maicosuel is Hoffenhiem's second summer signing after Karlsruhe's Christian Eichner.

I never heard of Goldman Morgenstern & Partners Financial Intelligence Service before, but they published a press release which lists the turnover of each Bundesliga club for the 2007/2008 season. The data seems to come from an article in the print edition of Kicker magazine. Said article supposedly dealt with the official Bundesliga report for [.

Scottish Premier League side Hibernian have unveiled their new 2009-10 Home and away shirts. The new Hibs kits have been manufactured by Le Coq Sportif. The home shirt is a green and white outfit. The club crest is in the centre of the shirt, with the logo of sponsors McEwan Fraser below it. The Le Coq Sportif [.

TSG 1899 Hoffenheim is a German football club based in Hoffenheim, a suburb of Sinsheim, Baden-Württemberg. In 2007 the club decided to adopt the use of the short form name 1899 Hoffenheim in place of the traditional TSG Hoffenheim. A fifth division side in 2000, the club made a remarkable advance to the Bundesliga in [.

German Bundesliga side FC Koln ( Cologne) have unveiled their new home shirt for the 2009-10 home season. Over 1400 fans were present for the live unveiling. The red and white strip is manufactured by Reebok. It uses the PlayDry technology for optimum moisture management. Sponsors REWE have their logo in the centre of the jersey, while [.

Soccernet is reporting that US u17 starlets Joseph Gyau and Charles Renken have signed contracts with German Club 1899 Hoffenheim. The two youngsters, who are generally considered the top two prospects in the u17 squad, will split time between Hoffenheim and the Vancouver Whitecaps youth academy for the next year, before a full time move to Germany.

A must read interview with Ralf Rangnick. Together with the other must read interview with Dietmar Hopp you'll get a very good insight into the Hoffenheim project, going far beyond fairytales, miracles and unicorns. (Spiegel Online) The Bundesliga's best XI of the Hinrunde according to... (Deutsche Welle) The Bundesliga's worst XI of the Hinrunde according to.

A running commentary of the weekend's Bundesliga action. Feel free to share your thoughts via the comments. This weekend all times will be Peru Time (PET, CET -6h), in honor of Werder Bremen's man of the match against Milan: Claudio Pizzarro. *** Saturday [07.35] This edition is a bit late. I was out on Friday and could only [.

A running commentary of the weekend's Bundesliga action. Feel free to share your thoughts via the comments. This weekend all times will be Pacific Standard Time (PST, CET -9h) to help Landon Donovan get used to life in Los Angeles again. *** Friday [22.00] Schalke 1-0 Cologne Schalke scored a brilliantly strung together team goal.

German club SC Freiburg have unveiled their new home (heimtrikot), away ( Auswärtstrikot) and third ( Ausweichtrikot) for the 2009-10 season. The new SC Freiburg jerseys have been made by Nike. Duravit are the jersey sponsors. The home jersey is blue with horizontal white pinstripes. The third jersey is blue with white pinstripes, while the away jersey [.

A running commentary of the weekend's Bundesliga action. Feel free to share your thoughts via the comments. *** Friday Trivial pre-match stats: Hoffenheim have lost four of five top of the table clashes. Hoffenheim will play four of those five top of the table clashes at home in the second half of the season.

Hoffenheim's coach Ralf Rangnick isn't nicknamed The Professor for nothing and this is his latest creation: a combined striker/goalkeeper. With his fetish for "polyvalent" players, Hertha's coach Lucien Favre must be green with envy. Anyone got an idea for a name for this beast?

Italian giants AS Roma have unveiled their new shirts for the 2009-10 season. The new AS Roma 2009/10 shirts are made by Kappa. The home jersey is pretty much the same, with a minor change in the collar. We again have the Kappa logo on the shoulders, and that of sponsors Wind in the centre of [...] Related posts:

1. New Crystal Palace 2009-10 shirts- home and away Championship club Crystal Palace have revealed their new home and.

1899 Hoffenheim was the biggest story in European football last fall.The newly promoted side was leading the Bundesliga as Christmas approached. Of course, Hoffenheim fell off but they left their mark on the world of football and the Bundesliga.

Today, Hoffenheim signed two of the best young American prospects ever: attacker Joseph-Claude Gyau and midfielder Charles Renken.

Hamburg HSV: Bruno Labbadia (Germany) Bayern Leverkusen: Jupp Heynckes (Germany) Werder Bremen: Thomas Schaaf (Germany) FC Schalke 04: Felix Magath (Germany) Borussia Mönchengladbach: Michael Frontzeck (Germany) Eintracht Frankfurt: Michael Skibbe (Germany) VfL Wolfsburg: Armin Veh (Germany) FC Bayern München: Louis van Gaal (Holland) VfB Stuttgart: Markus Babbel (Germany) 1899 Hoffenheim: Ralf Rangnick (Germany) FSV Mainz 05: Jörn Andersen (Norway) Borussia Dortmund: Jürgen Klopp (Germany) Hannover 96: Dieter [.

A running commentary of the weekend's Bundesliga action. Feel free to share your thoughts via the comments. I modified the format a bit and introduced timestamps. Due to the time-zone spanning super-global nature of this blog, I decided to feature a different timezone each week. In honor of one of our most frequent commenters I'll [.

We should be happy, that he isn't putting his money into museums and art galleries, but into football among other things. The German FA's secretary general Wolfgang Niersbach about Hoffenheim's sugar daddy Dietmar Hopp. In fact the German FA is so happy and thankful, that they bought a football database application by ICW, a startup company [.

(Summary is not available.)

The Bundesliga would have us believe that.

A Bosnian duo are striking mayhem.

Edin Dzeko of VFL Wolfsburg has scored 14 goals. He and Brazilian Grafite with 18 are benefiting from the playmaking ability of Dzeko's countryman, Zvjezdan Misimović, the captain of the Bosnia & Herzegovina national team.

Coming soon
Hansa Rostock v Kaiserslautern (01:05:09)
The EFW team are kicking off May in style with a visit to everybody's favourite football and beer destination, Germany. Our flight arrives in Berlin on Friday morning before we board the train - or as we like to call them 'mobile pubs' to Rostock.

• Third division table toppers Union Berlin are building a stadium for the fans by the fans. (Deutsche Welle: VOD - MP4)
• Hoffenheim's fairy dust has evaporated and now Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger heaps more misery on them by challenging their title as Germany's greatest village team. (ESPN Soccernet)
• Talking about misery.

A principios de temporada en la Bundesliga, el pequeño equipo del 1899 Hoffenheim sorprendía a todo mundo y se posicionaba en los primeros lugares de la tabla general.

De hecho al finalizar la primer vuelta el "Hoffe" obtenía el meramente nominal título de invierno, empatando en puntos con el campeón reinante Bayern München, pero superándolo en cuestión de goleo.

• There's a St. Pauli Offside now! There must be a better way to integrate it into the Bundesliga Offside than hoping for an extra quick promotion to the first division. (St. Pauli Offside)
• A close Bundesliga title race decided on the final matchday? Happens 50% of the time, so what's all the buzz about?

Uli Hoeness predicted that this championship won't be decided on goal difference, but rather that someone would slip up, and he was right albeit in the wrong places.

Hannover 0-5 Wolfsburg. Except for the sell out crowd there was nothing really derby-ish about this game (and then, the last match at home usually tends to be a sell out anyway).

What good is a liveblog in a tape-delayed world? I have no idea. I'll leave this philosophical question unanswered and let our American readers deal with it.

For everyone else it's season 46 episode 34 of the Bundesliga. We've already been served 2970 minutes high on excitement and low on answers - the latter will have to be packed into the upcoming 90 minutes.

Grafite gets Wolfsburg's party started (Reuters)Our look at the Winners and Losers from 2008/2009 across Europe's major leagues continues now on Just-Football. Part 1 assessed the English Premier...

In other words: our Wolfsburg Offside is looking for someone to take over and join our lively Bundesliga family here at The Offside.

Please send your fake takeover applications to admin@nufc.co.uk and the real ones to daryl@theoffside.com.

Update: Just as I write this post the Borussia Dortmund Offside goes up for auction as well.

Extra Time. We can end the debate about where the seven minutes of extra time came from in the Manchester derby. They were taken from the Bundesliga's three Sunday fixtures, where the refs decided to call it a day after pretty much exactly 90 minutes. It's not really a coincidence but rather an annoying habit.

Establishing something comparable to England's Big Four remains a distant dream for last season's top four in the Bundesliga. Wolfsburg are 7th after disappointingly drawing with Bochum. Munich are 8th after disappointingly drawing with Cologne. Stuttgart are 13th after disappointingly losing to Bremen.

Bayern were busy exercising control and dominance. Leverkusen were busy defending. Hamburg were busy passing the ball around. Creativity, inspiration and excitement were busy waiting for a date that would never show up. Not this weekend.

Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. VfB Stuttgart will host Sevilla in the Champions League on Tuesday and then head off to Hannover for, what is now, a relegation six-pointer.

... and the table clearly wants Hertha to win their first ever Bundesliga title this season. Why would a Bundesliga table otherwise decide to read like the standard chant of Hertha fans: Ha Ho He, Hertha BSC? Exactly. And now excuse me, I'm busy with my new assignment to look for patterns in magazines and [.

Its derby day in MadridHello to one and all and welcome to this week's instalment of 'Three to See' on Just Football. Last week we brought you games in England, Italy and Denmark. To quickly recap, here were the results of those three games:Manchester United 0-0 Tottenham Hotspur (United win 4-1 on penalties)Inter Milan 3-3 AS RomaBrondby 0-1 FC CopenhagenSo what do we have for you this week?

Its derby day in MadridHello to one and all and welcome to this week's instalment of 'Three to See' on Just Football. Last week we brought you games in England, Italy and Denmark. To quickly... ...div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/Just-football?a=CJnhqpaC8Y4:m49UxOkymI0:4cEx4HpKnUU"img src="http://feeds2.

Its derby day in MadridHello to one and all and welcome to this week's instalment of 'Three to See' on Just Football. Last week we brought you games in England, Italy and Denmark. To quickly... ...div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/Just-football?a=9fl-cXcBkx8:m49UxOkymI0:4cEx4HpKnUU"img src="http://feeds2.

Its derby day in MadridHello to one and all and welcome to this week's instalment of 'Three to See' on Just Football. Last week we brought you games in England, Italy and Denmark. To quickly... ...div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/Just-football?a=fD7T2ff-QUQ:m49UxOkymI0:4cEx4HpKnUU"img src="http://feeds2.

Oh, what a pity, Wolfsburg and Stuttgart won, Bayern and Berlin didn't. It could've been really close and thrilling at the season's finale, next weekend but unfortunately two competitors were not able to do what they had to. Winning, that is. The games:

Hannover 96 – VfL Wolfsburg 0-5

No surprise, another embarrassment by the club from lower Saxony.