HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4-5) are playing a home game 5,000 miles away in Munich, Germany. It’s the first NFL game to ever be played in Germany when they face the Seattle Seahawks (6-3) on Sunday.
European Bucs’ fans have been anticipating this game all season.
Carsten Neubauer is one of them. He’s part of the Bucs Germany fan club. Neubauer got hooked on American football during the early days of NFL Europe. He was a fan of the Rhein Fire in his hometown of Dusseldorf, Germany.
He figured that he might as well pick an NFL team to follow.
“They were the long-term losers, so I picked the Bucs,” Neubauer told ABC Action News sports anchor Kyle Burger. “It didn’t turn out to be the best choice for many, many years. I stayed with it.”
Many years later, his fanatic investment paid off. He cashed in in a big way during Tampa Bay’s first Super Bowl victory in 2003 in San Diego. This civil engineer scored media credentials from a friend of a friend.
“That was definitely one of the highlights of my whole life,” Neubauer said. “Seeing the Bucs winning the Super Bowl in the stadium, as a German, which was completely unusual in those days.”
He snuck into the locker room and was on the field during the postgame celebration. He even grabbed a celebratory newspaper with the headline “Bucs Win!”
“It’s an original; I really took it from the bench,” Neubauer said as the newspaper hung on the wall behind him. “Hopefully, no one from the Bucs will sue me for that after 20 years. I will never sell it.”
He’s been to Bucs’ games in Tampa Bay a half dozen times and has seen the team play in London twice. In 2019, it was a loss against the Carolina Panthers.
“In London, the outcome (of that game) was quite funny,” he said. “(Quarterback) Jameis Winston in his London game against the Panthers was awful. That was the most terrible game I had ever seen.”
Winston threw five interceptions in a 37-26 loss.
In 2009, the Bucs lost to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in London.
“Many of us want to take the chance to see Brady play for us,” Neubauer said. “We saw him beating the (stuff) out of us in London, but quarterbacking for us, this is special.”
Now in Brady’s third season with the Buccaneers, Neubauer and Bucs fans from all over Europe will make the trek to Munich’s Allianz Stadium to see the G.O.A.T. in red and pewter.
“We are looking forward to people coming from the Netherlands, Bucs UK, you know, will come over to Germany,” Neubauer said. “This is going to be a very good party. French Bucs fans will come, Swiss Bucs fans will come, and people from Hungary will come. It will be a big, big party.”
