Is this the smallest club ever to play in a major European league?

When Hoffenheim were promoted to the German Bundesliga for the first time in 2008, much was made of one statistic in particular.

Not the fact that they had climbed from the eighth tier to the top flight in fewer than 20 years, nor that they had gained promotion from Bundesliga 2 in their very first season in professional football

Smallest club in the Bundesliga complete fairy-tale rise to top flight

Hoffenheim’s rise was not quite the fairy tale it appeared, with the club benefitting significantly from the financial backing of billionaire owner Dietmar Hopp, but they still deserve credit for establishing themselves as a Bundesliga mainstay and even finished third under now-Germany boss Julian Nagelsmann in 2017/18.

Next season, though, they will be playing against a side who have an even stronger claim to be the smallest club ever to play in the Bundesliga.

SV Elversberg sealed promotion to the top flight for the first time in their history on the final day of the Bundesliga season, as a 3-0 win over Preussen Munster saw them finish runners-up in the second tier.

The club’s home ground, the Ursapharm-Arena an der Kaiserlinde, has a capacity of only 10,000 – yet that could still hold almost the whole town of Spiesen-Elversberg, which has a population of 13,000 people.

Elversberg were playing in Germany’s regionalised fourth tier as recently as 2021/22, while they had never played in the Bundesliga 2 before 2023/24.

However, the Saarland-based club almost won promotion 12 months ago after finishing third in the table, only to lose 4-3 on aggregate to Heidenheim in the promotion/relegation play-off.

Manager Horst Steffen left to join Werder Bremen after that defeat and Elversberg appointed little-known manager Vincent Wagner, who presided over a brilliant campaign that saw his side finish second behind Schalke, and ahead of third-place Paderborn on goal difference.

It means Spiesen-Elversberg will be the smallest town to be represented in the Bundesliga, as Hoffenheim are actually based in nearby Sinsheim, which has a population of around 36,000.

Incredibly, it is not the smallest town to host a club playing in a major European league in recent years.

That honour goes to Guingamp, whose side played in France’s Ligue 1 from 2013 to 2019 despite the town having a population of just 7,000 people.