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.\n\nBack 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.\n\nOn 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.”
