The smallest stadium in the Bundesliga

The 2023/24 Bundesliga season has news. For the first time in the history of the German top league, Heidenheim is playing, the fifty-seventh different team to take part in the Bundesliga. The promotion for Heidenheim came on the final day of the 2. Bundesliga, the German second division, at the end of a crazy game. It took a heart-stopping victory on the pitch of Jahn Regensburg to crown the dream of a city of 50,000 inhabitants and a club that 20 years ago played in the fifth division. Down 2-0, Heidenheim won in a comeback 3-2 with two goals between the 93rd and 99th minutes. Two goals broke the hearts of the Hamburg fans, who in the meantime had already invaded the pitch after the victory over Sandhausen, celebrating a promotion that later failed to materialize.

Heidenheim's Bundesliga start was not the best - zero points in two matches - but the last match against Hoffenheim was the first played in the top flight at the Voith-Arena, the smallest stadium of the season. It surpassed the Stadion An der Alten Försterei, home of Union Berlin with standing room only, which will be replaced by the Olympiastadion for Union's Champions League home games this season. The Voith Arena can in fact hold 15,000 spectators - one fifth of the capacity of Munich's Allianz Arena. In terms of architecture, the structure is that of a traditional stadium: it is a rectangular layout with only one ring, which was completely covered after the renovation and expansion work that began in 2008 and ended in 2010. Its location is decidedly more fascinating, as the stadium is surrounded by greenery not far from Hellenstein Castle, a must-see for tourists travelling to this area of Baden-Württemberg.

The last opponent faced at the Voith-Arena is curiously enough a town even smaller than Heidenheim an der Brenz, namely Sinsheim, but unlike Heidenheim, it could count on the financial support of Dietmar Hopp, a German billionaire and co-founder of the multinational computer company SAP, who in 1999 decided to take over the team he had played in as a boy and take it from the regional championships to the Bundesliga. Heidenheim can also count on a 'local' sponsor, namely Voith, a German company based in Heidenheim an der Brenz, one of the most prosperous in the field of engineering, but which has never financed the club with the intention of climbing the hierarchy of German football. The credit in this case goes almost exclusively to the on-field work done by Frank Schmidt, Heidenheim's manager since 2007, i.e. since the team played in the Baden-Württemberg Oberliga, the fourth division of German football. Seventeen years later, he is still on the club's bench and is leading Heidenheim into what will forever be a historic season for the club..