Hoffenheim hopes to escape relegation in Dortmund

Hoffenheim's fairytale ride to the top tier of German football is likely to come to an end Saturday on the final day of the Bundesliga season.

The small provincial club that stirred passions when it gained promotion five years ago is set to be relegated, barring an unlikely series of results.

Hoffenheim needs to win in Dortmund to even have a chance of avoiding relegation by clinching the playoff slot. At the same time, Augsburg has to slip against already-relegated Greuther Fuerth and Fortuna Duesseldorf must drop points in Hannover.

''If we manage to win in Dortmund, we have a good chance of extending the season,'' said Markus Gisdol, Hoffenheim's fourth coach this season.

Going into the final round, Hoffenheim is two points behind both clubs. Duesseldorf is ahead of Augsburg on goal difference by five goals. Augsburg holds 16th place, which means a two-leg playoff for a spot in the Bundesliga next season against the third-place team from the second division, Kaiserslautern.

Second-place Dortmund, on the other hand, is warming up for the Champions League final against Bayern Munich and is expected to field its strongest lineup.

Hoffenheim has struggled the entire season and shares the worst record on the road with Duesseldorf, with only two wins.

Despite the record, captain Andreas Beck believes his team still has a chance.

''The best thing is that we are still in the race despite all the setbacks,'' Beck told Kicker magazine. ''There were moments in which we were really far away from escaping relegation.

''We've told ourselves, when you play 10 times against Dortmund, perhaps there is one or two games when you can hurt them. One of them could be Saturday,'' Beck said. ''If we can't believe in that, who can? The entire country wrote us off weeks ago.''

Beck was among the original squad that swept from the third division to the first in successive seasons and injected a fresh wind into the Bundesliga.

Halfway into its maiden Bundesliga season, Hoffenheim was leading the standings and was the talk of the town with its relentlessly attacking, early-checking style under innovative coach Ralf Rangnick. The club fell back later but still ended in the top half of the standings.

Successive seasons were not as productive as Hoffenheim fell short of achieving its target of eventually playing in Europe but none was as bad as the current one.

Despite boasting a squad of 38 players valued at an estimated 70 million euros ($90.23 million), Hoffenheim has not been able to lift itself from the drop zone, even after another shopping spree during the winter break. Many signings of the past two seasons were flops, while leading players, such as striker Vedad Ibisevic, were allowed to leave.

Disaster struck early in the season when talented midfielder Boris Vukcevic was nearly killed in a car crash. Vukcevic was long in a coma before beginning to recover.

Hoffenheim's early success is due to the backing of software billionaire Dietmar Hopp, who spent hundreds of millions of his personal fortune on his hometown club. Hoffenheim boasts a modern stadium completed after its promotion and a state of the art training center.

Although Hoffenheim bought talent, it also groomed young players, something that was neglected in recent years.

Not everyone saw Hoffenheim's rise benevolently, dismissing the club as a rich man's toy without any tradition or history.

Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke said at the time: ''Dietmar Hopp is completely fine, but the Bundesliga doesn't need Hoffenheim by all means.''

Dortmund fans angered Hopp then by holding a sign that had him in the crosshairs of a sniper and Hopp even filed a complaint with police.

Hopp will not be among 3,600 Hoffenheim fans traveling to the match.

Hopp has promised to continue backing Hoffenheim even if it drops back into the second division. Hopp wants the club to go back to developing young players and giving them a chance.