BERLINBERLIN (Reuters) - Success has come at a price for village club 1899 Hoffenheim, the unlikely leaders of Germany's top football league.
Dedicated fans were elated in May when their team, from a village near Heidelberg with a population of just 3,200, won promotion to the Bundesliga, topping a meteoric rise from the third division in just two seasons.
And this season has been even better. After two wins in two games, Hoffenheim have leapt to the top of the Bundesliga, overtaking giants like Bayern Munich.
But the fairy tale, made possible by copious cash injections from patron Dietmar Hopp, a local millionaire who co-founded Europe's biggest software company SAP, has sparked envy and loathing among rival supporters.
Borussia Moenchengladbach fans chanted "Dietmar Hopp, son of a whore" at last Saturday's match, forcing club president Rolf Koenigs to apologise for their behaviour.
Hoffenheim's story has also highlighted the relative cash shortages faced by many top German clubs which have been struggling to compete with teams in England, Spain and Italy.
In Sinsheim, the town in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg to which Hoffenheim belongs, the streets are decked out in the team's blue and white flags and banners.
"Football euphoria has been unleashed, even among people who weren't very interested in football before," Rolf Geinert, mayor of Sinsheim, told Reuters.
Locals are savouring the moment.
"It's like a dream, we can barely believe it," said Thomas Schmitz-Guenther of a fan club in nearby Neckertal.
"Playing in the Bundesliga is like being a teenager invited to your older brother's party with girls for the first time."
ENVY AND LOATHING
But Hoffenheim have had a less-than-friendly reception.
"Envy and hatred follows us wherever we go. We've been voted Germany's most unpopular club," said Schmitz-Guenther.
Money is the main reason, alongside a sense among Germany's long-established clubs that a spot in the venerable Bundesliga must be earned through years of sweat and tears.
Fans admit the team's success is a result of the millions of euros Hopp has pumped into the club since the early 1990s.
The 68-year-old local has enabled the club he used to play for to splash out on players and staff like Brazilian midfielder Carlos Eduardo for eight million euros (6.4 million pounds) and coach Ralf Rangnick, a former boss of Stuttgart and Schalke.
Seen by critics as equivalent to Chelsea's tycoon Russian owner Roman Abramovich, Hopp is also funding the construction of a 30,000-seat stadium due to be completed early next year. Its current ground holds just 5,000.
"A lot of people think a millionaire has injected a lot of money into the club and without that they wouldn't be where they are now," said Christian Thiele, a diehard Bayern Munich fan.
"They have to prove themselves to earn respect. It's like the envy people have for rich new kids on the block."
His defenders say Hopp has pursued a long-term strategy designed to develop a sustainable team built on young players rather than splurging on a few big talents.
Hopp, who expects Hoffenheim to be financially independent in a few years, is also committed to his own region. Mayor Geinert says the new stadium will bring jobs and prosperity.
OBVIOUS BENEFITS
The obvious benefits of cash at Hoffenheim underscore the challenges facing other Bundesliga clubs which are short of the kind of money enjoyed by the big teams in countries like Britain.
Experts blame German clubs' failure to win big international trophies in recent years at least partly on their inability to compete for the best international players.
Last season, three of the four semi-finalists and the two finalists in the lucrative Champions League were English.
"Apart from Bayern Munich, German clubs do not pay the wages needed to attract top-flight players who mainly go to England," said Sebastian Hein, an analyst specialising in the soccer industry, at Germany's Bankhaus Lampe.
One reason for this is that German rules forbid individual investors from taking a majority stake in clubs, which makes it impossible for figures like Abramovich to buy a team here.
In addition, income from television rights, put by Hein at about 400 million euros a year for German clubs, is about 300 million euros less a year than for English teams.
(Editing by Dave Thompson)