The capacity of Allianz Arena in Munich is 66,000. It is where Bayern Munich will host TSG 1899 Hoffenheim in a weekend showdown for first place in the famed Bundesliga soccer league as the season approaches its midpoint.

That's Bayern Munich, Germany's largest, wealthiest, most popular and most successful club.

And Hoffenheim, from a village so small that all of its residents could fit in Allianz Arena and there would still be 62,728 empty seats.

It's a fairy tale that even the Brothers Grimm, themselves from a quaint German hamlet, might not be able to concoct, and one that the American sports system simply wouldn't allow. In 1990, Hoffenheim was playing in the Baden-Wurttemberg A Liga, the equivalent of the eighth division, or four levels below single-A baseball, or what amounts to a Saturday afternoon recreation league.

Most sports in Europe operate on a system of promotion and relegation, where the top teams in a league annually swap places with the bottom teams from the next higher division. The idea is that any team, anywhere, can meticulously work its way to the top.

It never really happens, of course.

Or at least it didn't until Dietmar Hopp took over the amateur club from the village he grew up in and began injecting money he made from co-founding software giant SAP. Hopp, 68, played for TSG 1899 Hoffenheim as a youth (he was a striker), and he says, "As a rich man I carry a certain social responsibility."

Forbes estimates Hopp's net worth at $1 billion, and over the past decade "social responsibility" has meant $192 million for the soccer club from a village in the rolling countryside south of Frankfurt. From a place that doesn't appear on most maps, with a population of either 3,272 or 3,273 (it depends on the source), with quiet lanes and half-timber houses, with three bakers, two butchers and the smallest train station you've ever seen. Hopp's childhood home is now a kebab restaurant.

You finish first in baseball's Single-A, you get a nice trophy and you start next season in the same league against the same teams. In Germany and elsewhere across Europe, you move up.

By 1996, Hoffenheim had climbed to the Verbandsliga Nordbaden, or fifth division. In 2000, it gained promotion to the Oberliga. In 2001, the Regionalliga Sud. In 2007, the Bundesliga's second division.

Now it's in first place in the premier Bundesliga at 11-3-1, three points ahead of Bayern Munich entering Friday's showdown at 66,000-seat Allianz Arena.

"Hurra, das ganze Dorf ist da," say blue T-shirts and scarves worn by Hoffenheim fans.

The entire village is here.

"I do things differently," Hopp says.

The town soccer stadium holds just 6,300 and did not meet Bundesliga minimum standards, so Hoffenheim currently plays home games 30 miles away in Mannheim. But that's only temporary. Hopp is building a 30,000-seat stadium in neighboring Sinsheim that is expected to open next month.

The 3,272 residents of Hoffenheim and its growing legion of fans revere Hopp. And reviled by most everyone else.

Opposing fans refer to Hoffenheim as FC Nouveau Riche, as a "test tube team." They sing the Dire Straits hit, "Money for Nothing," and unfurl banners deriding Hopp for buying his way into the Bundesliga.

"What troubles me is the form of the protests," Hopp, who has stopped attending road games, told Der Spiegel magazine. "I can tolerate the son-of-a-whore chants. But when I see a poster depicting me in the sights of a gun, as recently happened at a match against Dortmund, it stops being amusing. The police arrested the young man."

But in the next breath, Hopp says this: "By the way, we dropped the charges when the man apologized. We also invited him to see how things are in Hoffenheim for himself."

What he'd see is a club that is nothing like Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has in England with Chelsea. Hopp has built infrastructure first - a new training facility, a new stadium, a respected youth academy - and only then spent money on players. And even then, he hasn't shopped the transfer market like Imelda Marcos in a shoe store.

With an average age of 23, Hoffenheim fields the youngest starting 11 in the Bundesliga and has a total salary that ranks in the lower half of the league. It found Senegal's Demba Ba in Belgium and Nigeria's Chinedu Obasi in Norway. It bought Brazilian youth star Carlos Eduardo before bigger European clubs could snap him up, and saw something in Bosnia's Vedad Ibisevic that others didn't.

Ibisevic, who played one season at St. Louis University, leads the Bundesliga with 17 goals in 15 matches.

There's also coach Ralf Rangnick, who is on his fifth Bundesliga club. The tendency of newly promoted teams is to play defensively. Not Rangnick. He employs a wild, frenzied attack that is conducive to a young, energetic roster and has resulted in a league-leading 40 goals, or nearly three per game.

And Hopp is German, in a league where, unlike England, foreign ownership is forbidden.

"(People) see me as epitomizing the commercialization of soccer," Hopp said. "I'm the face. One day, when the door is opened to foreign investors and people such as the sheikh of Abu Dhabi buy stakes in the Bundesliga, perhaps then they'll say: 'It would be nice if we still had someone like Hopp.' "

Mark Zeigler writes about soccer for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Contact him at mark.zeigler@uniontrib.com.

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