Stuttgart's wild ones two games from greatness

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(CNN) -- The former Liverpool and Scotland defender turned television pundit Alan Hansen once remarked of the fledging Manchester United side of Giggs, Beckham, Scholes and Neville that you "never win anything with kids." Alex Ferguson's young guns went on to win the English league and cup double.

Now in Germany, a similarly youthful side at a club far less accustomed to success than Manchester United stand on the brink of a comparable achievement.

A victory for Stuttgart against lowly Energie Cottbus on the final day of the Bundesliga season on Saturday would bring the club only their third Bundesliga title of the modern era and their first since 1992.

If all goes to plan, Stuttgart then have the chance to complete the double when they face Nuremberg in the German Cup final in Berlin the following weekend.

The omens look remarkably good. Stuttgart's 3-2 win over Bochum on Saturday -- twice coming from behind -- was their seventh win in a row; a run of form that has included a memorable 2-1 win over Bayern Munich that effectively killed the two-time defending champions' ambitions of a Bundesliga hat-trick and enabled them to close a seven-point gap to overtake Schalke just as the finishing line looms into view.

But none of this was meant to happen this season for a club who could manage no better than ninth last season, and who had swapped the legendary Italian Giovanni Trapattoni (admittedly a legend whose greatest achievements date back at least two decades) for the more modest track record of Armin Veh, whose CV didn't stretch much beyond permanent also-rans Hansa Rostock and a string of lower league clubs.

Nor did the club's pre-season signings -- Mexican fullback Ricardo Osorio and his defensive midfield-playing international teammate Pavel Pardo -- suggest a club about to set the Bundesliga alight. Predictably, Stuttgart lost their first two games.

Since then however, the progress made by Veh's young side -- inspired by the 21-year-old German striker Mario Gomez teenage pair Sami Khedira and Serdar and the more experienced Brazilian forward Cacau -- has earned them the nickname in the De Bild newspaper "Die jungen Wilden", or "Young Wild Ones."

"The team is hungry for success and everyone's working hard to improve. Also, I think we've got the right mix of youth and experience," explains Veh.

Whatever happens over the next two weekends, that mix may be hard to recreate next season.

In terms of resources, no German club can compete with Bayern Munich and, in most seasons when the Bavarians slip up, one of the country's other massively-supported clubs -- Borussia Dortmund, Kaiserslautern or Werder Bremen (though not, it seems, the terminally unsuccessful Schalke) -- can usually be expected to capitalize.

With the reputation and balance sheet of a selling club, even guaranteed Champions League football is unlikely to be enough for Veh to keep his squad together. For Stuttgart fans this may be as good as it will ever get.

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