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"What's that? Is this the Bundesliga?" my girlfriend said, when the national news aired the Bundesliga standings late on Sunday night. SC Paderborn 07 were top, and it came as a surprise to me that she questioned that. She is not alone. - Yokhin: The incredible story of Paderborn
- Hesse: Paderborn to be wild The new kids have taken the league by storm, after entering the season as "the biggest outsider" in Bundesliga history, as the club labelled themselves. Paderborn operate out of an old caretaker's flat next to their training ground right in the centre of the town, in which coach Andre Breitenreiter, 40, has his office and where the players have their dressing room. They don't have a scouting department, and their sporting director, Michael Born is scanning the lower leagues for youngsters and Bundesliga dropouts. Here are a few basics on SC Paderborn, who on Tuesday will visit Bayern's Allianz Arena as the Bundesliga team of the hour. Who are this team? Paderborn are the 53rd team to play in Bundesliga. Four matches into the season, they are already two points shy over overtaking the worst team to play in the top division, Tasmania Berlin, who won 10 points in their only season in Bundesliga back in the 1960s. The city of Paderborn is located in the middle of nowhere, some 100 kilometers east of Dortmund. They won promotion by finishing the last 2.Bundesliga season behind champions 1.FC Cologne. A major upset, for a club traditionally tipped for relegation rather than promotion ahead of every season. But Breitenreiter, a former Bundesliga pro, not only kept the team out of the drop zone, but moreover won promotion to Bundesliga. How did they get top of the table? For the first time in eight years, two wins and two draws are enough to top the Bundesliga after four matchdays. In 2006-07, coming out of the 2006 World Cup, Hertha BSC topped the league table with eight points, and ended the season in mid-table, adding only 36 more points to their total. Still, you can't blame Paderborn for taking all three points from Hamburg 3-0 in their only away match of the season so far. At home, the 15,000-capacity Benteler Arena, they started with two draws against Mainz and Cologne, before beating Hannover 2-0. That eight points are enough to lead the Bundesliga is down to a bizarre fourth matchday in Germany, with Bayern, Dortmund and Leverkusen all dropping points away from home. Adding to that, Paderborn's Moritz Stoppelkamp scored a Bundesliga-record goal from some 80 meters against Hannover. A turbulent day, and the most surprising leaders of the league in a long time. Who are their best players? It's hard to single out a player in a team where effort and a wave of euphoria have clearly been important. The 22-year-old Elias Kachunga stands out with three goals in four games. Deemed a lightweight at both Borussia Monchengladbach and Hertha Berlin, the attacker joined Paderborn on loan in January 2013, and signed a permanent deal in the summer. He only recently debuted for Germany's under-21s in their 2-0 win over Ireland. And then there is Daniel Bruckner, 33, and Suleyman Koc, 25. Bruckner spent parts of his formative years in Hamburg as a homeless person. "There were a number of years things didn't go too well for me," he told tz back in 2009. "It was not like I slept under bridges, but I did not have my own flat." He has started every match this season. And the Paderborn fans refer to him as Fussballgott (Football God), when the lineups are announced. Berlin-born Koc appeared to have lost it all when he was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison for a number of robberies and battery in December 2011, as a gang member robbing gambling halls. But he begged for and was granted a second chance by his former club SV Babelsberg, when he was released as a day prisoner the following year. In January 2014, he signed for Paderborn, and now stars for his new club in attack. Can they ever have a hope to sustain this momentum? In the Ostwestfalen region they all know that this will not last forever. "It's a nice snapshot for the team, and something special for the fans," the club's sporting director Michael Born, 46, who has worked at the club for 20 years, told kicker. "Our fanshop should consider making a wallpaper out of the Bundesliga standings." That's common sense in a region whose inhabitants can be described as hard-working stoics. Paderborn are a team of Bundesliga throw-outs, who are eager to prove their former clubs wrong, and have reached the top of the league working as a unit. It is questionable whether that will be enough to prevail at Bayern Munich, and only three points at the Bundesliga champions is likely to secure a second matchday on top of the league. "We'll try and put our best performance on the pitch in Munich. We'll have to see if that's enough," Born said. "Hopefully, we can stay up. Everything else would be presumptuous." "We only want to enjoy that match and try and give it our all. The result is not the most important thing," coach Breitenreiter added.
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