Record appearance-maker Rudy signs until 2023

"Sebastian and TSG are an excellent fit and have become a real success story, one that will now continue. Such a long collaboration is exceptional, especially in the fast-paced world of football," said Alexander Rosen. "He is a player with outstanding technical skills and a great tactical understanding. He also has an enormous wealth of experience that the talented youngsters in our team can benefit from," added the director of football. Furthermore, Rosen has already spoken to Rudy about potentially continuing the collaboration with TSG once he has hung up his boots.

"I'm delighted to now be back at TSG on a permanent basis and I'm very grateful for the trust shown over many years. We've achieved a lot here in recent times, and especially in this extraordinary past season, I was once again inspired by the great team spirit of everyone within the club," said Sebastian Rudy, who will continue to wear the shirt number 16. "Like everyone else, I'm now looking forward to the new season, in which we can hopefully concentrate exclusively on sporting matters and be together with our supporters."

This will be Sebastian Rudy's 10th Bundesliga campaign with the Kraichgau club. He, along with many others, became a senior international while at TSG and has made 29 appearances for Germany (one goal). He then moved to record champions Bayern Munich in 2017. In the summer of 2019, and then again in 2020, he was loaned back to TSG by FC Schalke 04. Across his club career, he has made 315 Bundesliga appearances, played 13 times in the Champions League (plus two CL qualifiers) and nine times in the Europa League/UEFA Cup. In addition to that, he has made 30 appearances in the DFB-Pokal. He became a German champion with Bayern Munich in 2018, and was then named in the Germany squad for the 2018 World Cup in Russia later that summer, having already won the Confederations Cup in 2017.