Newly promoted SV Elversberg: The 59th club in the Bundesliga is a Chihuahua sport

The Elversberg Sports Association may be ready for the Bundesliga – but is the Bundesliga also ready for SV Elversberg? In the 64th season of the German elite class, the newcomer from Saarland is the 59th club. With around 13,000 residents, Spiesen-Elversberg is the smallest community where Bundesliga football has ever been played. Anyone arriving here as a non-resident without a car has to take the train to the neighboring communities of Neunkirchen or St. Ingbert and then take a stadium shuttle. 33 years after the relegation of 1. FC Saarbrücken – in 1993 under coach Peter Neururer – Saarland is returning to the Bundesliga. This Saturday (3:30 p.m.) Bayer Leverkusen comes to Elversberg for the league opener, and two weeks later the home game against Bayern Munich awaits.

Anyone who reaches their destination in Elversberg will find a paradise for football traditionalists. In the “Ursapharm-Arena an der Kaiserlinde” there is currently two thirds of standing room. The stadium, which is currently undergoing long-term renovation, only offers 10,000 seats, of which only 3,410 are designated as seats. The club has sold 7,400 season tickets, with a quota of just under 1,500 remaining for visiting fans. The stadium renovation is scheduled to be completed by 2027, with a capacity of 15,500 seats. The players are currently changing in containers.

It is hardly surprising that SV Elversberg is hardly known nationally. Their rapid rise in recent years would have caused a lack of oxygen in the mountaineering sector. In 2022 we made the jump to the third league, in 2023 we went to the second league, and then to the first last May. The most important driver of this success story is the Saarbrücken-based pharmaceutical company Ursapharm and its owners, the Holzer family. Father Frank is chairman of the SVE supervisory board, his son Dominik is the president. The company’s most promoted product is Hylo eye drops.

SV Elversberg achieved its long-term upswing under sports director Ole Book (now Borussia Dortmund) and coach Horst Steffen (now Werder Bremen). But promotion to the Bundesliga only happened after the two had already left the club. The celebrated promotion coach is called Vincent Wagner. The 40-year-old high school teacher for sports and history came to the club in the summer of 2025, having previously been coach of TSG Hoffenheim II in the fourth division for three years. Christian Weber is now the sports director. The 42-year-old was at Fortuna Düsseldorf until the end of 2025, but was replaced by Sven Mislintat during a realignment there. Mislintat was relegated to the third division with Düsseldorf. Weber with Elversberg in the first.

The most important additions for promotion coach Vincent Wagner are loans from league rivals

Elversberg starts the season as an underdog, a Chihuahua to be precise. The season budget for the first league premiere is expected to be just in the double-digit million range. According to the reference website transfermarkt.de the SVE has a squad market value of almost 60 million euros. Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Dortmund each have a good 500 million, while FC Bayern has more than a billion euros. Coach Wagner says: “There are players in the Bundesliga who earn as much as our entire team put together.”

It will be all the more exciting to see how the Elversberg squad, which has only added a few players, will perform at the top. At the heart of the new signings are three young loan players. Central attacking midfielder Francis Onyeka, 19, is on loan from Leverkusen – he scored eight goals for second division club Bochum last season. Center forward Noel Futkeu, 23, is on loan from Eintracht Frankfurt – he scored 19 goals for second division club Greuther Fürth last season. And offensive midfielder Noah Darvich, 19, came on loan from VfB Stuttgart – he scored ten goals for third division club VfB II last season. Other relevant new players are central defender Luca Sirch, 27 (from 1. FC Kaiserslautern), winger Cole Campbell, 20 (from Borussia Dortmund, most recently loaned to Hoffenheim) – and winger Maurice Krattenmacher, 21 (from FC Bayern). He made 22 second division appearances for Hertha BSC in the previous season.

Last Saturday, Elversberger won their first competitive game as a Bundesliga team in the DFB Cup against the top third division team MSV Duisburg with a difficult 3-1. Luca Schnellbacher, 32, who has been with the club for six years, and late substitute Onyeka (88th and 90+1) scored the goals with a brace. With the attacking midfielders Campbell and Darvich there were only two newcomers in the starting line-up. “For Elversberg standards, we can be proud that we have a team like this with such great talent,” said coach Wagner recently and added: “But we also need them if we want to have even the slightest chance of surviving in the Bundesliga.”