Qualified! From 4th Tier To Bundesliga Playoffs In 3 Seasons – Who Are SV Elversberg? | OneFootball

Bundesliga play-offs: the small former coal mining town of Spiesen-Elversberg in the Saarland is in football fever, thanks mainly to the tactics of rising German coaching star Horst Steffen, the backing of a local entrepreneur, and a strong community approach, rather than a vast transfer budget.

SV Elversberg is only in its second season in the 2. Bundesliga, and its achievements are truly the stuff of dreams. 56-year-old Steffen, the club’s coach for over six years, has managed to guide the White and Blacks through from the fourth division, Regionalliga, to the Bundesliga playoffs in three seasons.

With a 2-1 win on Sunday at the sold-out 65,000-capacity Veltins Arena, the home of 7-time Deutsche Meister Schalke 04, Elversberg – a club that was promoted from the third tier in 22/23, and one that very few had on their radar ahead of the season – is on the verge of first-tier football.

Hoffenheim, a club in a town of just under 13,000 inhabitants, even reaching the second tier borders on incredible; Bundesliga would be an absolute sensation.

It would be easy to speculate that the club are another Hoffenheim, who hail from a village of 3,000 inhabitants, also in the South-West. Hoffenheim are backed by SAP founder billionaire Dietmar Hopp, who is reported by Transfermarkt to have invested over €350m to take the club from the sixth to the Champions League in the last 25 years. But the comparison is only partly right: the club known as ‘Die Elv’ are much more than that.

The principal sponsors and stadium name givers are Ursapharm, a pharmaceutical business of 833 employees in the optical industry. The club’s chairman, Frank Holzer, doubles as chairman of the local company and is a former professional footballer who played for Eintracht Braunschweig and local rivals 1. FC Saarbrücken.

Holzer’s vision is also backed by the community. Hundreds of local concerns, both large and very small, have stepped in to sponsor the club, including one called “Aliens are Real”, about whom we can only speculate.

Holzer was born in Neunkirchen, just 5km from the club’s stadium. He inherited Ursapharm from his father, Albrecht. Now seventy-two, he has made Elversberg his personal project: on three occasions, he even stepped in as interim manager. He is passionate about the game and knows it from the ground up.

His stated dream is to “make the club real rivals to 1. FC Saarbrücken”. Saarbrücken is a city of almost 200,000 inhabitants; the club finished twice in the 1940s and 50s as vice-champions, and have been a constant in the second and first tiers for large parts of history.

So Holzer certainly has ambition and a real vision for Elversberg. According to public records, Ursapharm have invested €13m in the club. But this has mainly been in the infrastructure, not the players, principally the training facilities and the stadium. In the last five seasons, based on Transfermarket, only €4.83m — a little more than the cost of a single Championship player — has been invested in the playing staff. Steffen has instead preferred to focus on loan players, those out of contract, and on young talent.

The manager is clear about what drives the club to success. “We want to spread joy and get the love of the game back, I think we’re achieving that,” said Steffen in a recent interview with SWR TV. That much is certain: as they were in 22/23, home games at the Stadion an der Kaiserlinde are sold out for most games in 24/25.

The Saarland region is no stranger to surprises in football. FC 08 Homburg, a club from a town of 42,000 inhabitants, was promoted to the Bundesliga in 86/87 only to crash out two seasons later. Not before a major bust-up, in which they were banned on “ethical and moral” grounds from wearing their kit, emblazoned with the logo of a condom brand.

Founded in 1907, SVE are very far from football aristocracy. The club has spent most of its history beneath the fifth tier. It rose to the third tier, then Amateurliga Saarland, between 1951 and 60, but then disappeared, falling as low as the seventh tier, the Landesliga, in 85/86.

Among the former players is Brentford and Wimbledon striker Gary Blissett. After playing 84 matches in the fourth tier between 1997-00, Blisset went on to become assistant manager during the club’s first successful era in the Regionalliga-Südwest, the South-West division of the fourth tier in 1996/97. He stayed for a total of 11 years at the Stadion an der Kaiserlinde.

The club’s story is one of persistence. In 2013/14, they rose again to the fourth but were once again relegated. In both 15/16 and the following season, the club missed promotion in the playoffs.

The modest side’s most recent ascent began with its promotion to the 3. Liga in 2022.  Promotion straight through to the second tier at the end of that season followed… will they soon be facing BVB, Bayern, and Leipzig?

SVE’s management has repeatedly shown a lucky hand with transfers. This includes Carlo Sickinger, who has rediscovered the joy of playing after a difficult time blighted by injury at second-tier SV Sandhausen. “Horst Steffen has put the fun back into the team,” the 27-year-old recently said about his coach. The defender goes further, describing Steffen’s coaching methods as a “sensation”.

The 56-year-old coach has found fans among analysts for the highly fluid and tactically innovative pressing game they have been displaying. Caio Miguel of Total Football Analysis glowed: “SVE’s defence and attack are among the best in the league, Horst Steffen is leading the club to unthinkable heights”.

Among the other players who are leading the way, Kosovo international striker Fisnik Asllani, who is currently second in the 2. Bundesliga scorer table with 16 goals and is on loan from Austria Vienna, is the most prominent. In attack, he is supported by another loan player from Hoffenheim, former Germany U20 international Muhammad Damar, who has played in all but three games this season and picked up 9 goals.

Like all title-winners, the SVE side have a strong defence. Left-back Maurice Neubauer has been the defensive leader since joining from former Bundesliga side Homburg in 2020. He works optimally alongside right-back Robin Fellhauer, who has been with the club since 2019. Austrian goalkeeper Nicolas Kristof has also developed into an absolute mainstay since arriving from fourth-tier Walldorf in the summer of 2022.

Holger Osieck, World Cup-winning assistant manager with Germany at Italia ’90 and local Saarland resident, praised the club’s vision: “They have highly competent management and a vision. Qualifying for the play-offs would be a great and unexpected achievement for them, promotion would be a just reward for their efforts.”

What Ursapharm owner Frank Holzer is doing is investing further in the infrastructure, and developments are exciting. A lot has happened both on and off the pitch. The 9790-capacity stadium at the Kaiserlinde has undergone an enormous transformation to expand capacity to 15,000 for the first tier. Whilst this would still be the smallest in the league, the club don’t lack ambition.

The work on the stadium is extensive. In addition to constructing the main stand, the standing area has also been extended. The west stand behind the goal has also been rebuilt and partially opened. The work will provide just under 3,500 new standing places. The new stand, still partly a temporary structure, must be completed by the end of 2026.

The construction of the new arena will cost just under €30m. But according to Steffen, speaking to SWR, the project will not stop there: “We have designed and built something together. There is an opportunity to develop further. That applies to my work and the entire club. Elversberg is an exciting project.” Did they start building with the Bundesliga in mind?

The rise of the club has not been without its detractors. Thorsten Poppe, a sports reporter with national broadcaster ZDF who has followed the club’s rise, is sceptical: “The club cannot sustain itself without Ursapharm, a small town of 13,000 can’t realistically fund a club at that level”.

SVE now have the promotion playoff to the Bundesliga ahead of them. There, they will meet a 1. FC Heidenheim side that has taken part in the Conference League this season, and has a squad value twice that of Steffen’s Elversberg.

Even in the moment of greatest success, Steffen, who made 207 Bundesliga appearances as a midfielder across spells at Borussia Mönchengladbach and Duisburg and played for Germany’s U21s, remains humble. “Our aim each season is simply to do better than in the previous season. If we get more points than last season, then I am happy,” explains the Krefeld-born manager, who many are marking up for bigger things.

SV Elversberg play the promotion playoff v 1. FC Heidenheim on 22 May with the return leg at home on May 26, both kicking off at 20:30 (CET).  Some may regard SV Elversberg as little more than the ambition of one man. Many neutrals, though, will be backing the club from the little village in Saarland in the playoffs, that much is sure.