The team from out of nowhere

Shocking Hoffenheim is currently second in the Bundesliga, having beaten traditional powers Dortmund and Hannover this season. Friedemann Vogel/Bongarts/Getty Images

By Nick Bidwell, Special to SI.com, World Soccer

Preseason forecasts of the survival chances of newly promoted clubs tend to be of the dark, doom-laden and deeply condescending variety, the vast majority condemned even before a ball is kicked. So it made a refreshing change for Bundesliga rookies 1899 Hoffenheim to be welcomed aboard in August to the sound of optimism.

Bayer Leverkusen sporting director Rudi Völler believes the club is a candidate for a top-six finish, while Bayern Munich coach Jürgen Klinsmann also sees it on an irresistible ascent. "Sooner or later, Hoffenheim is going to be a superpower in German football," Klinsi says.

Why the upbeat projections for a club with no pedigree and whose home is a sleepy village in the southwestern Baden-Württemberg region (population 3,272)? The answer, quite simply, lays in the extraordinary financial resources it has at hand, the pipeline to the bank vaults of its chief backer, software billionaire Dietmar Hopp, reportedly the ninth-richest man in Germany.

The Teutonic Bill Gates, a striker at the club as a youngster, has pumped in $200 million since 1990, piloting an amazing rise from the eighth tier to the top in less than two decades, including two promotions in the past two seasons.

Critics sneer that Hoffenheim has bought itself a place at the Bundesliga table, and in many ways, it's true. The second division had never seen such astronomical amounts spent when the club arrived in summer 2007. Indeed, the $19 million it splashed out on Senegalese striker Demba Ba from Belgian side Mouscron, Nigerian forward Chinedu Obasi (Lyn Oslo) and Brazilian attacking midfielder Carlos Eduardo (Grêmio) was more than the rest of the division combined spent on fresh talent that summer.

If Hoffenheim was looking to make a statement of voracious intent, the signing of little Carlos Eduardo was very much it. The highly skilled Brazil Under-20 star had been courted by the likes of Real Madrid and AC Milan but instead chose the relative anonymity of 1899. "I wanted to develop my game in peace," explained the youngster on completing his $10 million move, a record for the German second division.

It was a watershed moment for the German game. Hoffenheim had proved its ambition and deep pockets. Hopp, his fleet of Brinks Mat bullion trucks in tow, had shown his willingness to trade blow for blow with the heavyweights in the transfer market.

On sealing promotion to the top flight last May as runners-up, the movers and shakers at Hoffenheim insisted they would keep faith with the players who delivered last term's historic success, and they've been true to their word. But the desire for continuity didn't end the heavy investment, almost $14.5 million going towards making loan deals permanent and the purchases of promising Stuttgart fullback Andreas Beck and Brazilian striker Wellington from Internacional. To put that outlay in perspective, only four Bundesliga teams (Leverkusen, Hamburg, Schalke and Wolfsburg) spent more over the summer.

The Hoffenheim high-rolling model was always likely to draw fierce opposition from traditionalists. German soccer doesn't generally do mega-rich benefactors, traditionally preferring clubs run on democratic, bottom-up lines, where members call the shots. Go anywhere in the country and the criticism takes the same form. Hoffenheim is nouveaux riches interlopers/"corporate whores"/an artificial entity with no tradition or real fan base.