How SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp led Hoffenheim's team from the bush leagues to Germany's Bundesliga - By Klaus Justen

Modern-day football clubs turned into companies a long time ago. Dietmar Hopp applied his business acumen as a top manager with SAP to a small football team, investing ?100 million of his own money. Beginning in August the team, 1899 Hoffenheim, will play in Germany's 1st division.

When the German football league kicks off its new season on Aug. 15, countless fans will doubtless do a double or triple take when they look at a map of the country. Hoffenheim? Where in the world is Hoffenheim?

Locating this tiny town will pose quite a challenge. Numbering just 3,300 residents, Hoffenheim is a suburb of Sinsheim, and it's partially hidden in the hills of the Kraichgau in southwest Germany. That region between Karlsruhe and Heidelberg is known for its wine, the famous Schwetzinger asparagus - and a certain software company, founded here at the beginning of the 1970s, SAP. And there is a direct connection between SAP and the Hoffenheim team. Dietmar Hopp, one of SAP's co-founders and a retired but restless billionaire, is the man behind the football miracle from the hinterlands of Baden.

Hopp had all kinds of plans for his home team when he began supporting it back in 1991 - just not that it would go professional. "I was always a football nut," Hopp said. As a teenager and a university student, he played for TSG - as the team is called in shorthand. Even after he rose through the ranks of SAP to head the company, he couldn't keep his feet off the ball. Every Friday night was football night for Hopp and his employees. "That was a sacred time, even if we had to work deep into the night for the rest of the week," he said.

Hopp wanted to help his team, which as the 1990s got under way was mucking about in one of the lowest leagues in German football. But he refused to go the route of most patrons by investing huge amounts of money in professional has-beens, who would then kick the team upstairs from the county league. Part one of the football fairy tale involved a massive youth development program. That has already paid off handsomely since at least one Hoffenheim player belongs to each of Germany's national youth football teams.

Hopp, who has funneled the vast majority of his estimated ?4 billion fortune into a foundation, is ever the businessman. He wants to use athletics to equip young people with life skills and stresses that "sports mold you, they require ambition and effort but you also have to learn how to lose." His organization, called Anpfiff fürs Leben, (roughly translated as kickoff to life) currently supports about 1,000 young people.

Seeing that he could draw upon this treasure trove of up-and-coming players, Hopp at some point asked himself: "Should we merely be a training ground to help other clubs or do we want to offer our young people the chance to play professionally?" Three years ago - by then Hoffenheim was playing in the top amateur league - the decision was made to set sail for the Bundesliga. A decision which then national trainer Jürgen Klinsmann referred to as the "most exciting goal in German football."

Hopp started off by assembling his team leaders. He lured coach Ralf Rangnick to the Baden countryside. Rangnick, seen as an analytical and modern trainer, had until recently been playing with Schalke 04 and competing in the Champions League. Bernhard Peters, who became Hopp's athletic and youth director, changed careers from field hockey - two years ago, he led that German national team to the world championships. He had been one of Klinsmann's top choices for athletic director of the German Football Federation, the DFB.

"You can transfer much of what made SAP a success into the development of a football team," said Hopp. To him, that means putting top-notch employees in key positions. And that, in turn, means "employees who think and act like entrepreneurs." A far cry from the approach at other German Bundesliga teams, where club presidents help determine the lineup or where sponsors have the final say over personnel decisions.

Project Bundesliga was successful much sooner than expected. Last year, Hoffenheim rose to the second-highest football league and then this year marched straight on to the Bundesliga. In part, they can thank their patron for splashing out big-time at the beginning of last season, when he spent ?20 million on new players.

But Hopp repeatedly refers to these costs as "investments, not expenses." "All of these players are still very young," he said. "When they switch to another club, they will yield large transfer fees." When it comes to cash flow, the club is already now at plus/minus zero, Hopp added. And over the long haul, the Bundesliga enterprise has to support itself: He is already 68 years old and has no plans to leave his sons "a bottomless financial pit as well."

Little love is lost for the Hoffenheim model among the German football community, however. Fans from opposing teams speak derisively of "SC Nouveau Riche" and dismiss it as lacking in tradition and a fan culture. Christian Heidel, who manages competitor Mainz 05, went even further. "Too bad that such a team is taking away one of the 36 slots in professional football," he said at the beginning of last season.

"It's the same in sports as it is in the economy: New companies are on their way up and you should accept them," Hopp shot back. "Our tradition is the future."

He is also sick and tired of being compared to the Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich, who invested many times more cash in Chelsea - rumors peg the sum at more than ?700 million. The ?100 million Hopp poured into the Hoffenheim model is far more modest.

The lion's share of that money is going into a large construction site along the autobahn near Sins­heim. That is where Hoffenheim will play in the near future, in a stadium seating 30,000 people and costing around ?60 million. Who is paying for it? The team's patron - unlike most Bundesliga stadiums in Germany where the taxpayers pay.

The Bundesliga's newest member is also investing ?15 million in a new training center and office complex for the team, having gleaned some ideas for the building from Arsenal London. Because though this season's top goal is to stay in the Bundesliga, over the long haul, Hopp and his employees have set their sights on international competitions. And then it will be the international fans' turn to ask the question: Where in the world is Hoffenheim?