Unforgettable Moments
The “Miracle of Bern” on 4 July 1954
The “Miracle of Bern” on 4 July 1954 thrilled 14-year-old Dietmar Hopp so much that a few days later he turned up at TSG Hoffenheim wanting to play. “I wanted to be Fritz Walter too,” he later explained in a feature on the club website.
thrilled 14-year-old Dietmar Hopp so much that a few days later he turned up at TSG Hoffenheim wanting to play. “I wanted to be Fritz Walter too,” he later explained in a feature on the club website. He played his first match in his brother’s knickerbockers and football boots because, almost ten years after the war, thrift was still the rule in Kraichgau.
Also entirely in keeping with the economic-miracle years: substantial food for footballers. Forget nutrition science and food coaching – in the Hoffenheim of the 1950s, and even when Eintracht Frankfurt entered the Bundesliga in 1963, sausage specialties on the menu were completely normal.
Hopp studied communications engineering in Karlsruhe and bec...
Hopp studied communications engineering in Karlsruhe and became a classic weekend commuter: sixty kilometres home to Hoffenheim, to mother Hopp, to his girlfriend, and on Sundays to the TSG pitch.
Hopp studied communications engineering in Karlsruhe and became a classic weekend commuter: sixty kilometres home to Hoffenheim, to mother Hopp, to his girlfriend, and on Sundays to the TSG pitch. By the age of 17 he was already playing for the first team in the A-Klasse Sinsheim. “As a centre-forward, I was needed in Hoffenheim,” Hopp later recalled.
Back then, they often still paid in kind. Long before founding SAP in 1972 with Hasso Plattner, Claus Wellenreuther, Hans-Werner Hector and Klaus Tschira, Hopp had his first sponsorship deal.
A neighbouring farmer promised him a tin of liver sausage for every goal.
On Sunday evenings it was delivered directly after the match, and Hopp took the tins back to his student residence. “Once,” he remembered, “I brought back three tins at once. That caused quite a stir.”
TSG — Financial Stability Score
Hoffenheim ist ein bilanzielles Paradox: Hervorragende EK-Quote (71,4%) bei gleichzeitig höchster PK-Quote der Liga (61,7%). Übersetzt: Hopp hat viel Geld reingesteckt (hohes EK), aber die laufenden Kosten fressen es auf. Ohne Hopp wäre Hoffenheim weder in der Lage, Bundesliga-Gehälter zu zahlen, noch den Spielbetrieb am Standort Sinsheim aufrechtzuerhalten. Die zentrale Frage: Was passiert nach Hopp?
Dramatic Turning Points
At the time, the idea that Liverpool with
At the time, the idea that Liverpool with Jürgen Klopp, Bayern with Hopp’s golf friend Franz Beckenbauer or Manchester City with Pep Guardiola might one day play in Sinsheim belonged to the realm of football science fiction.
Jürgen Klopp, Bayern with Hopp’s golf friend Franz Beckenbauer or Manchester City with Pep Guardiola might one day play in Sinsheim belonged to the realm of football science fiction. Back then, the highlights in Hoffe were derbies against FC Zuzenhausen, less than four kilometres away. “That was real rivalry,” Hopp later said.
The rivalry even helped create one of the club’s crucial moments. In the early 1960s, in a decisive relegation match, Hopp felt the neighbours were almost trying to let Hoffenheim win.
He missed a penalty anyway.
Hoffenheim lost 3–5 and went down.
Everything changed in 1989. The Cold War was
Everything changed in 1989.
over and billionaire Hopp decided to help the village club that had given him so many fine footballing memories. Hoffenheim were still stuck in the lower reaches of Baden-Württemberg amateur football. Hopp dropped by the little ground almost by chance and decided to get involved financially.
Money was no object.
His first coup was to appoint Erwin Rupp, former DFB-Pokal hero with VfB Eppingen, as coach. With Rupp and Hopp, promotion to the Bezirksliga followed in 1990/91, then the Landesliga in 1992, the Verbandsliga in 1996 and the Oberliga in 2000.
Hopp lived for “his” TSG, but he never
Hopp lived for “his” TSG, but he never put success above human decency.
put success above human decency. More than 350 million euros would flow into the club after 1989, along with support for handball side Rhein-Neckar Löwen and ice hockey club Adler Mannheim. With Ralf Rangnick, the “football professor”, Hoffenheim stormed from the Regionalliga to the Bundesliga in 2007/08. Yet Hopp’s patronage came under fire from the first day in the top flight.
Critics said he was undermining 50+1 and turning Hoffenheim into a club without tradition.
Hans-Joachim Watzke quickly emerged as chief critic, speaking of a disadvantage for traditional clubs and fuelling hostility, especially in Dortmund. Hopp became public enemy number one in Westphalia.
The banner showing his face in crosshairs with the words “Hasta la vista, Hopp” became infamous. None of it stopped the project, as Watzke liked to call it disparagingly.
Hopp made Hoffenheim socially acceptable.
In 2009 the 60-million-euro Rhein-Neckar-Arena was ready. For the club’s 100th anniversary in 1999 he had already gifted a 5,000-seat stadium. With the opening of the new arena against Cottbus, Hopp proudly declared that they were no longer just a village club but the club of the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region with 2.4 million inhabitants.
From liver sausage incentives and a missed penalty against the local rival grew two special moments whose effects were eventually felt across all of German football.