He knocked three times on the Bundesliga gate with VfL, but it wasn’t until Oberhausen that his dream of the top German division came true. Willi Mumme remained closely connected to the purple-whites – today he is celebrating his 75th birthday.
The exceptional kicker, born in 1946, learned to play football at Rot-Weiß Damme before moving to Bremer Brücke in 1965. It took about two years to get used to it, then the winger, who gradually discovered both sides of the attack and provided his teammates with first-class crosses from there, was an indispensable part of the purple-whites squad.
By 1971 he had played 185 points games for VfL, scored 40 goals and prepared numerous more. Mumme and his team won the championship in the Regionalliga Nord three times in a row and thus qualified for the promotion to the Bundesliga. But only in the first year were the purple-whites really close.
The home game against Rot-Weiß Essen, when over 30,000 spectators jostled at the Bremer Brücke, has not been forgotten to this day. Willi Mumme met his namesake Willi “Ente” Lippens here, who contributed one of three goals to the apparently preliminary tour of the tour. But at VfL (almost) anything was possible this season. In the last 20 minutes, the purple-whites equalized the 0: 3 and only missed promotion after the 1: 3 in the second leg.
In 1970 the team became champions again, but was quickly lost in the promotion round – and a year later a VfL rose to the Bundesliga, but it did not come from Osnabrück, but from Bochum.
For Willi Mumme, the dream of the Bundesliga came true. After moving to Rot-Weiß Oberhausen, he played 65 games in the Beletage, during which he scored five goals. When RWO was relegated in 1973, Mumme also went back to the second-class regional league – but now laced his football boots for Borussia Dortmund. In the BVB jersey, he played another 32 league games (4 goals) before slowly saying goodbye to the big stage through engagements with Hammer SpVg and Bünder SV.
After his impressive football career, Willi Mumme devoted himself to his “normal” job. After all, he was also a trained pedagogue and as such was a member of the Artland High School in Quakenbrück until 2011.
Today he lives again in Damme, where it all began 75 years ago …
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