Rufer has assembled a side consisting largely of New Zealanders including Wellington Phoenix duo Louis Fenton and Tyler Boyd, James Debenham, Reece Lambert, Liam Anderson and Alex Rufer, who is currently with the New Zealand U-17 squad at the OFC U-17 Championship in Vanuatu.
Also adding some Pacific Island flavour to the mix is Papua New Guinea’s Alwin Komolong who recently led his side at the OFC U-20 Championship in Fiji.
The annual two-day tournament will be held on 8-9 May and includes youth sides from some of Europe’s great clubs including Manchester United, FC Basel, Borussia Dortmund, Torino FC, Zenit St. Petersburg, FX Zurich, Grasshopper Club and of course hosts FC Blue Stars. Also attending this year’s tournament is Brazilian club side Botafogo.
“This will be the first time a team from Oceania is competing. They have, every year, a team normally coming from Brazil competing and they’ve had teams in the past from Africa,” Rufer says. “I’m not sure if they’ve had anyone from Asia, but it’s a first for Oceania so that’s pretty cool.”
Rufer says he received an invitation for a New Zealand team to attend the 75th anniversary.
“Just using my Swiss connections, I played there as a pro for seven years, and then knowing the guys at FIFA who I have been involved with over the past few years and have kept in contact with in regards to the tournament we got lucky and received an invite.”
Roughly half the squad have been able to take part in a few training sessions during their build-up to the tournament and Rufer concedes that it isn’t an ideal situation.
“Obviously it’s going to be difficult compared with the other teams who are more regularly playing with each other. They play competitions together, it’s not easy. But I’ve got my brother Shane with me, who is like the main coach for the team, and fortunately he’s got a few clues about football having been a former pro himself, so hopefully we won’t embarrass ourselves,” he says.
With two groups of five teams, each side will have three games on the first day followed by the final group match on the morning of the second day. The final table positions will be decided after the top side in each group play of, the second placed play second and so on. The halves are 20 minutes each way.
“The players who will attend are born in 1993 or younger and the majority of clubs will have all 1993-born players. We’ve only got a few so it isn’t going to be easy, but it will be an amazing experience.
“Dortmund recently had an incredible game in the UEFA Champions League and at the end of the day, six or seven of those current squad members came through the U-19 team from Dortmund. They have a fantastic youth team there and these guys are going to be playing against players that in five years’ time will probably be playing the Champions League for Dortmund so it’s just fantastic to get this opportunity.”
The tournament has also presented the opportunity for Fenton and Boyd to train with Rufer’s former club Werder Bremen, the pair left for Germany this week, and will link up with the rest of the Wynrs squad in Switzerland ahead of the tournament.

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