Jürgen Dispan is always in the front row – whether on the stands or as the driver of the team bus for VfB Stuttgart. The Swabian football fan couldn’t wish for a better side gig: here, he gets closer to the sport and its stars more than anyone else.
Omnibus Magazine
A football fan behind the wheel
As a team bus driver for VfB Stuttgart, Jürgen Dispan gets up close and personal with football stars.
Always in the front row.
Jürgen Dispan has driven the VfB Stuttgart team bus for 20 years. And he's learnt a lot on the way.
For Jürgen Dispan, game day in the Bundesliga starts on Friday morning at six. That’s when the 54-year-old master HGV mechanic swaps his position as head of the transmission development workshop at Daimler Truck AG for the driver’s seat of a coach. And not just any coach. Jürgen Dispan drives the team bus for the Bundesliga team VfB Stuttgart: a Mercedes-Benz Travego. Not just for away games, the team is also always there for home fixtures. Jürgen Dispan starts early in order to get the bus to the venue on time. For 20 years, VfB fan Dispan has chauffeured his team to every game and every training camp. But even if it takes up more than half the weekends of every year, for amateur footballer Jürgen Dispan it is the best part-time job in the world: “my hobby is now my side gig.”
“The team places enormous trust in me – and I value that highly.”
A lucky chance brought Jürgen Dispan and VfB together around 20 years ago. At that time, he was responsible for lorry, bus and coach repairs and maintenance at the Mercedes-Benz subsidiary in Stuttgart. When VfB Stuttgart needed a second driver for a trip to a European Cup game, the driver at the time – Rolf Geissler – asked him if he wouldn’t like to take on the job. He said yes. Since then, Jürgen Dispan has had two work contracts – one with Daimler and one with the team. They never clash. “Most trips are on the weekend.
If I have to be on the road with the team during the week, I take a holiday,” the foreman explains. And his colleagues? “Of course, there’s a bit of jealousy now and then, but most of them are just interested and pester me every Monday after the game for a few scraps of insider information,” Jürgen Dispan reports. But if they do, they hit a brick wall. “The team places enormous trust in me – and I value that highly.”
BUS(Y)LIFE #4: Making his hobby his business – the team bus driver of VfB Stuttgart
BUS(Y)LIFE takes you onboard the bus-community and tells great stories from the life of the bus drivers. Episode 4 is about Jürgen, the team bus driver of VfB Stuttgart. For 20 years, the workshop manager of the Daimler Truck AG has combined his passion for the soccer club and Mercedes-Benz. No matter whether a win or a loss, Jürgen and the Mercedes-Benz Travego are fearless and faithful companions of the team.
“The players and I are great pals.”
On first name terms with the players.
Jürgen Dispan has long been part of the team, and is on first name terms with coaches and players. “The players and I are great pals,” he reports. Mario Gomez would chat with him during trips about everything under the sun, not just football. He once taught Brazilian player Adhemar a few scraps of Swabian dialect – and he’s still occasionally in touch with former national team member Cacau. His passengers nickname him “Bussi” and like to ask advice, say, about repairing and restoring old-timers.
“The worst thing that can happen is for the TV to stop working.”
Always safe and sound to the destination.
Even if the atmosphere in the Travego turns on the result, running from boisterous to deflated, the passionate VfB driver has never had problems with his passengers. “The worst thing that can happen is for the TV to stop working,” Dispan laughs. But some experiences with the other side’s fans have been no laughing matter: “once, a fan vehicle overtook us just before we reached the stadium, cut in right in front of us and then braked hard.” Only with a courageous swerve into the gap between two lorries in the right lane could the experienced driver save the situation. “It’s in such situations that I am happy that our Mercedes-Benz has so many assistance systems – like the emergency braking system and ESP – so I can rely fully on the bus technology,” says Dispan.
In the fast lane with VfB.
Looking back over 20 years, however, it’s the happy memories that predominate. Like the time a tyre blew on the way back from a game against SV Sandhausen and professional footballer Alexandru Maxim and a couple of fans got stuck in helping to change the wheel. Or the legendary approach to an evening fixture at Eintracht Frankfurt in 2007. The inbound Kennedyallee was so backed up with weekend traffic that it seemed impossible to get to the stadium on time. “Trainer Armin Veh came to the front and said ‘just think something up’,” Jürgen Dispan remembers. He didn’t hesitate, switched on “all the flashing lights I could find” and rolled on slowly but steadily up the completely empty outbound lane, past the traffic. “We won the game 4:0 and took the title at the end of the season,” says the VfB fan, clearly still elated. The next day, the papers combined his manoeuvre and the result in a single headline: “VfB Stuttgart in the fast lane”.
