When the Scottish EM dream finally came true, Frankfurt also had an extraordinary mood in the quiet Bad Willbell. “I planned straight: when is the first game? Get there or fly by car?”, Uli Weigman tells “SID”. He “had already blocked the duration of the tournament, now he is a relapse”.
Weigman is a family man of 59 years (two sons) and a portfolio manager of a “normal” life at Comergebank. But above all he is: a fan of the Scottish national football team. He founded the “German Tartan Army”, a congregation of like-minded people from the Rostock, Hamburg and Frankfurt regions. They meet in international matches – whenever and as often as possible.
It was in 1974 when the spark of the young Ulli Weigman sparked. At the World Cup, he and his father appeared in a first-round match between the Scots in Frankfurt Waldstadian against Yugoslavia (1: 1) and were “fascinated” by the colorful crowd. In 1992, he went to EM in Denmark with his favorite team by car. Island fans there “immediately adopted him”. Also in 1996 and in the 1998 World Cup, the last tournament ever with Scottish participation, he was there.
Weigmann finds the German national team “boring”. It is always about the title. The Scots, on the other hand, “are very happy when they win against Latvia,” says season ticket holders of regional league club FSV Frankfurt, who also won football in a very different way.
When the EM ticket was purchased after a dramatic victory in Serbia (5: 4 iE) on Thursday evening, “I was just tired,” Wegmann reports: “How the boys jumped from there – I couldn’t do it.”
He now hopes he can travel to the European Championships in Glasgow and London in the summer despite the epidemic. To this dream “I will not let myself be ruined”, Weigman says: “For now I will remain optimistic. I do not want to wait another 22 years!”