Soccer: Rufer heads across Ditch to grow junior coaching

Soccer legend Wynton Rufer is leaving New Zealand to expand his junior coaching empire across the Tasman.

The Fifa Oceania player of the century returned to New Zealand in 1997, determined to foster junior development and produce the next generation of stars capable of emulating achievements such as his 1992 European Cup Winners Cup triumph with German club Werder Bremen.

Rufer said chance meetings on a speaking tour of Australia with former Werder Bremen and now Greek national coach Otto Rehhagel presented opportunities that were too good to turn down.

"In April this year, I took Otto to Melbourne and Sydney and we had a couple of functions with the Greek community," Rufer said during a trip to monitor his Wynrs programmes in Havelock North and Napier.

"The response was phenomenal and out of that I got three opportunities in three different cities to start Wynrs over in Australia ...

"It's a huge opportunity and these things don't come up every day.

"Dealing with the federations over there, it's a totally different ball game, because all they see over there is the opportunity, whereas in New Zealand we only see the threat."

Rufer said interest in his programme had been shown in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

"It's like with Wynrs here. We only started up in Auckland, but people kept approaching us and now we're in Waikato, Wellington, Hawkes Bay, Blenheim."

Rufer heads to Australia in January. "My wife's from Perth and she'd love us to live over there but I'll need to live in the eastern states so that I can get back and forth to my Wynrs programmes in New Zealand."

Rufer will continue to work in other roles for the Oceania confederation, based in Auckland, and Fifa.

He is a member of Fifa's players' committee, comprising the likes of Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, Bobby Charlton, Michel Platini and George Weah.

- NZPA