MARTIN JOL, head coach of Hamburg, had expected a struggle. It was the extent of it that would perplex him. “Hoffenheim are an outstanding team,” Jol had said before the sides met last Sunday. With nine minutes still to go until half-time, Jol’s Hamburg, who were the league leaders, were losing 3-0. By the end, Hoffenheim were top of the table.

Few imagine Hoffenheim’s miracle can last until May, but they may reach the Champions League only 12 months after joining the top flight.

What records might they break there? One would be the smallest place with a Champions League team. There are, technically, just over 3,000 Hoffenheimers. Many of them work in Sinsheim, the southwest German town that counts Hoffenheim as one of its suburbs and where the team will soon be playing, once their new stadium, the Rhein-Neckar Arena, is ready in the new year. It will seat 30,000, which might leave the bingo hall and cinema empty on matchdays.

At the moment, 1899 Hoffenheim are entertaining crowds and walloping the likes of Hamburg and being admired not just for their pluck but their style - they went into yesterday as the top goalscorers in Bundesliga 1 and their speed and mobility were too much for Karlsruhe, who were dispatched 4-1.

The Bayern Munich captain, Mark van Bommel, says watching them reminds him of his former employers, the Barcelona team who won the European Cup in 2006.

Hoffenheim’s head coach, Ralf Rangnick, can come across as rather sober, but the show is captivating. Circus Hoffenheim, it is being called, in a flattering way. The heroes are a motley collection. In some minds, the player of the German season so far is Vedad Ibisevic, a 24-year-old Bosnian whose parents fled the Balkans when he was a child and whose pursuit of a football career took him to France and America en route to Germany. Leading scorer Ibisevic, below, found the net twice yesterday, as did Nigeria’s Chinedu Obasi, who came from the same source as Chelsea’s John Obi Mikel, Lyn of Oslo. Demba Ba, 23, is from Senegal via France and Belgium.

Of course money has been spent and Hoffenheim owe their status to investment from Dietmar Hopp. He once played in their youth team and then made a fortune in computer software. Close to a £100m has been ploughed into the club and yielded a staggering rise. In the early 1990s they were in the seventh division of the Baden-Wurttemberg league. They had reached the third tier of the German football pyramid by 2001 and then made some national impact with a strong run to the last eight of the German Cup four seasons ago. ,Some sneering could also be heard by then, not least when Hopp began talks about a merger with other clubs in the area and the creation of a new entity based in Heidelberg.

Naturally, there is envy from the hundreds of other clubs of Hoffenheim’s size who don’t have a billionaire benefactor and from the Bundesliga big boys who sense the newcomers will be hanging around for a while. Hopp, 68, has faced venomous chants from opposition fans to the point where he has asked clubs to guarantee his safety.

Rangnick, who was appointed head coach two summers ago, has a reputation for rigour, had worked in the upper echelons at Stuttgart, Hannover and Schalke 04, and can point to successive promotions. Hoffenheim reached Bundesliga 2 in 2007 and the top flight a year later and have a very good chance of being in a continental competition next September.

Their foreign guests will need to get their maps out of Germany and take care not to be confused: it’s Hoffenheim, not Hockenheim.