Last December, on matchday 16 of the previous season, the right full-back clashed with VfB against TSG for the very first time. During the 2-0 home win on the penultimate day of the campaign, in May, the 31-year-old was side-lined with a partial rupture of the frontal cruciate ligament, as Mario Gomez netted his third brace in the latter half of the 2017/2018 season.
Having played in the shirt with the infamous hoop between 2000 and 2008, making his Bundesliga debut for the Wasenelf in February 2006, Andreas Beck went on to make some 216 Bundesliga appearances for TSG Hoffenheim between 2008 and 2015. The defensive veteran is thus TSG's all-time record appearance maker in Germany's top-flight. In the Kraichgau region, Beck was made team-captain in 2010 and won nine international caps with the German national team under Joachim Löw in 2009 and 2010.
For Andreas Beck, the seven years spent in Hoffenheim are "part of my story." Over the past ten years, TSG have established themselves in the Bundesliga and developed into an "absolutely top-team. The game on Saturday will be a tough nut for us, but I'm looking forward to seeing the lads again." Under Julian Nagelsmann, the Kraichgauer club "mostly play very open football and almost always create the openings to score two or three goals. But we have a match-plan for holding our own and scoring goals too. Now we want to work our way forward bit-by-bit and all pull together to implement the coach's instructions."
