Special Moments
The "Miracle of Bern" on July 4, 1954 so thrilled 14-year-old Dietmar Hopp that just days later he turned up at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim. "I wanted to be Fritz Walter too," he explained years later in a feature on the Bundesliga club's website. Dietmar Hopp played his first match wearing his brother's knickerbockers and football boots — almost ten sizes too big.
Forget sports nutrition, food coaching and other bells and whistles — in 1950s Hoffenheim or at Eintracht Frankfurt's Bundesliga debut in 1963, sausage specialities on the menu were perfectly normal for footballers. Hopp studied communications engineering in Karlsruhe. He was a typical weekend commuter, like so many from the region. From Karlsruhe to Hoffenheim is barely 50 kilometres. And every weekend, his mother had a Leberwurst waiting for the hungry student.
Dietmar Hopp is a shrewd businessman. Long before he co-founded the software company Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung (SAP) in 1972 with his four IBM colleagues — Hasso Plattner, Claus Wellenreuther, Hans-Werner Hector and Klaus Tschira — and rose to become chairman, billionaire and one of Germany's richest men, he had already secured his first sponsorship deal.
That the mighty FC Liverpool with Jürgen Klopp might one day come for a Champions League qualifier, that FC Bayern München with Hopp's golfing friend Franz Beckenbauer or Manchester City with Pep Guardiola might visit Sinsheim — in those days, that was the most bizarre footballing science fiction imaginable. The highlights in "Hoffe" were the derbies against FC Zuzenhausen. Barely four kilometres apart as the crow flies — that was the Kraichgau Clásico.
Everything changed in 1989. The Cold War was over and billionaire Hopp decided to lend financial support to his hometown club 1899 Hoffenheim, to whom he owed so many wonderful footballing memories. The TSG was languishing in the depths of Baden-Württemberg amateur football. That is, where it had always been. Hopp dropped by the little stadium more or less by chance and decided to get financially involved.
Hopp lives for "his" TSG Hoffenheim, but he never puts success above humanity. As the magazine Top in Fußball – Hoffenheim (special issue) wrote in 2009: "People always come first for Hopp. At SAP, they called him 'Vadder Hopp.' He made sure his employees were well looked after. His credo: 'Inspire performance through humanity and understanding.'" More than 350 million euros have flowed from Hopp into social, sporting and medical projects in the Rhine-Neckar region.
With 1899 Hoffenheim, Ralf Rangnick — the "football professor" — achieved the march from the Regionalliga to the Bundesliga in 2007/08. But not everyone was well-disposed towards the benefactor. Dietmar Hopp's financial involvement was criticised from day one in the German football elite. The main charge: Hopp, who acted only as a patron with no official position in the club, was allegedly buying success and distorting competition.
Watzke, meanwhile, continued to pour fuel on the fire. He spoke of a "disadvantaging of traditional clubs" — and his criticism fell on receptive ears among large parts of the Dortmund public. Hopp was promptly declared "public enemy number one in Westphalia" and faced insults, defamation and threats. Particularly notorious was a BVB fan banner depicting Hopp in crosshairs with the words: "Hasta la vista Hopp!"
Sausage specialities as incentive for goals for a rather mediocre striker and a defeat against the neighbours — two special moments for TSG Hoffenheim — with far-reaching consequences for all of German football.