Cups for a tiny German town? Hoffenheim fans rouse their players

It’s as if nobody wanted the seventh and eighth place in the Bundesliga, which guarantees European cups. The teams Hoffenheim, Augsburg and Werder Bremen from the last two rounds combined to win one game.

Hoffenheim went into the match with Leipzig as the clear paper underdog. While its form has gone down steadily over the season, Leipzig has picked up a lot in the spring, nearly knocking Real Madrid out of the Champions League and hasn’t lost in the league once since.

Why don’t we play like this every weekend?

Hoffenheim knew they needed at least a draw to keep up with their cup contenders. Fortunately for them, the other rivals in the battle for seventh and eighth place – Freiburg, Augsburg and Werder Bremen – also failed to win.

As for Hoffenheim’s performance on Friday, it escalated as the minutes ticked by, thanks of course to a red card for their opponents. In the setup, the home fans got a well-deserved equaliser from Andrej Kramaric.

“Why don’t we play like this every weekend? It was a very good performance, especially the second half. It would have been a well-deserved win,” wrote Hoffenheim fan Leon in a liked comment on the Instagram post.

Europe for 3,500 locals

Pavel Kadeřábek played the whole game, with David Jurásek coming on for the last 20 minutes. They too helped the pressure that led to the equaliser. Hoffenheim continue to hold the eighth spot and the Conference League, but only a point ahead of Augsburg.

“We deserved to win, but a point is important. Now in Darmstadt we have to finally leave everything on the pitch and show that we want Europe. Do it for us fans, the club and the whole region,” supporter Jeremias alludes to the specificity of the club.

Hoffenheim is a very small town with less than 3,500 inhabitants. It is therefore essentially an intimate club, where often the players cannot even find housing, as Czech defender Pavel Kadeřábek has spoken about in the past.

Source: Bundesliga, Instagram – TSG 1899 Hoffenheim