The Fiji Football Association is now working towards setting up possible football academies in Fiji with the help of former All Whites and Bundesliga legend and the Oceania Footballer of the Century, Wynton Rufer.
Fiji FA president Rajesh Patel initiated this process after he met Rufer during the Pacific Cup in Auckland last year.
The Association board members together with technical director Ravinesh Kumar met with Rufer who was in the country for this meeting last week.
Chief executive officer Mohammed Yusuf said this would be made possible should they succeed in getting a greenlight from the governing body, FIFA.
“We have initiated the process of exploring a possible football academy with the help of the legend Rufer,” he said.
“Our technical director is liaising with him (Rufer) to prepare a plan for the board to approve before our president takes our proposal to FIFA to get the final approval.
“Rufer is running his own academy in Auckland and he has produced some of the popular players over the years like Chris Wood and Sarpreet Singh who has been part of his academy.”
Rufer is a New Zealand retired footballer who spent more than a decade of his professional career in Switzerland and Germany, achieving his greatest success at Werder Bremen, where he won a total of four major titles and finished the top scorer in the UEFA Champions League 1993-94 season. He was also a member of the New Zealand national team in its first FIFA World Cup appearance in 1982.
He was named the Oceania Footballer of the Century by the Oceania Football Confederation.
Rufer is running a School of Excellence named WYNRS (Wynton Rufer Soccer) pronounced “Winners” based in Auckland and offers skills based training sessions for kids between the age of 5 and 13.
Some of the renowned players who came through his academy are Chris Wood (1999-2007) playing for Burnley FC in the English Premier League, Sarpreet Singh (2008-2016) playing for Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga in Germany, Stefan Marinovic (2002-2008) and Alex Rufer (2002-2010) who are both playing for Wellington Phoenix and All Whites.
