• In 2000, Wynton Rufer was voted Oceania Player of the Century. He was also the Oceania Player of the Year in 1989, 1990 and 1992

• He won four major trophies with German giants Werder Bremen, where he played 174 matches and scored 59 goals

• In 2019, he collapsed while returning home from a basketball game in Auckland, but made a speedy recovery

Jayanta Oinam The story goes like this, while this 19-year-old boy from Wellington was busy taking pictures in Seville, soaking in the limelight of playing in a FIFA World Cup, and against Brazil, Pele was in the New Zealand locker room, handing out signed shirts. He missed out on one of the greatest gifts of his life. In the glut of football anecdotes, this is one of the game's best-kept secrets. The name of the player is Wynton Rufer. That, according to the player himself, is one of his "freak" stories. Another is about a "young Kiwi kid who went from New Zealand to the other side of the world and took on the Germans and won". These are good enough accounts, as told to BBC Sounds, to start delving into the career of this former player, who now runs an academy in Auckland, named WYNRS (Wynton Rufer Soccer), pronounced "Winners". To the wider world, his name may be a relative unknown, but Rufer is a legitimate legend. Named the Oceania Footballer of the Century by the Oceania Football Confederation in 2000, Rufer was the joint top-scorer in the 1993-94 UEFA Champions League along with Ronald Koeman. That was during his stint with Werder Bremen in Germany, where he won four major trophies – one Bundesliga title (1992-93), two German Cups (1990-91, 1993-94), a couple of Supercups (1993, 1994), and a UEFA Cup Winner's Cup (1991-92) against Monaco.

Having arrived in Germany as a 26-year-old in 1989, Rufer spent six years with Die Werderaner, leading the strike force during probably the "most successful era in the Werder Bremen history". He scored 59 goals in 174 matches for the club in all competitions. One of his most memorable outings came against the Diego Maradona-led Napoli in the third round of the 1989-90 UEFA Cup. In the first leg in Naples, Rufer scored a 90th-minute winner (3-2), which prompted the Argentina great to share his shirt with the Kiwi. Bremen went on to win the tie, 8-3 with Rufer once again scoring in the second leg. He also managed to impress the then-German football coach, Franz Beckenbauer, who said that if the Bremen striker was a German, he would have taken him to the 1990 World Cup in Italy, which they eventually won. Beckenbauer was not the only German great to be charmed by the Kiwi striker. Rufer’s manager at Bremen, legendary Otto Rehhagel once asked his ward, “Why aren’t you playing at Real Madrid?”. Of course, Rufer was one of his favourites. Years later, reliving the tie against Italian side Napoli, Rufer said that they "knocked out Diego Maradona's Napoli in Naples... scoring the winner, and also got his shirt after the game". In the same breath, he also shared what really happened in Spain during the 1982 World Cup, and the day he missed the opportunity to get his hands on a Pele shirt. "After the World Cup in Spain, I played in Switzerland for seven years and first three or four years, they used to call me a 'tourist' because I always take my camera with me. I just want to savour the moment. It was a dream come true. And here at the World Cup, we played Scotland and lost 5-2; Russia 3-nil, well I was close to scoring," he told BBC Sounds.

Rufer, then 19, was only nine matches old in international football when he landed in Spain with the national team for the World Cup. But having scored effectively the winning goal in the AFC vs OFC 1982 World Cup qualification play-off against China in Singapore, he was already a star in the New Zealand setup. "And now you are playing Brazil. My family [members] were in the stadium... at Sevilla, packed crowd, nearly 45,000... a sea of yellow, and you are basically playing the dream team [Socrates' Brazil]. Now on the pitch, taken photos and all sorts. And then go back into the change room and the New Zealand team members are all happy and in tears, because they got shirts signed by Pele. And I am like, what's going on here? And they said, 'Pele was here'. I missed out," he added. Born to a Swiss father and a Maori mother, Rufer first signed a contract with Norwich City in 1981 only to be denied a work permit to play in England. He, however, established himself as a striker to reckon with in Switzerland, where he turned up for FC Zurich, FC Aarau and Grasshoppers. In 100 matches for Zurich, he scored 43 times, then 18 in 37 for Aarau and 12 in 22 for Grasshoppers followed, before moving to Germany.

He also had stints in Japan, turning up for JEF United after the European sojourn, and in New Zealand for Stop Out and Wellington Diamond, early during his career; and Auckland Kingz before retirement in 2002 as player-coach of the club. In 2014, he became the head coach of Papua New Guinea, a position he relinquished the following year. After making his international debut in 1980, in a friendly against Kuwait, he played only 23 matches and scored 12 goals for New Zealand. But he remains probably the greatest Kiwi footballer. A two-time New Zealand Young Player of the Year in 1981 and 1982, he took the Oceania honours three times in 1989, 1990 and 1992, before earning the big gong, the Oceania Footballer of the Century. In 2019, he collapsed while returning home with a German friend from a basketball game in Auckland. He was reportedly saved by a passerby, who performed CPR. Then 56, he made a speedy recovery. And there is so much more to his story.