Wynton Alan Whai Rufer CNZM (born 29 December 1962) is a New Zealand retired professional footballer who played as a striker.
He 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.
Rufer would play in Switzerland in the following seven years, also representing FC Aarau and Grasshoppers: whilst at the former, he topped the scoring charts at 21 in the 1987–88 season, helping his club to the fourth place.
[3] With his brother Shane, Rufer took on player-coaching duties at North Shore United in 1998, before coaching the national Under-16 men's squad ahead of the 1999 Junior World Cup Finals, notably achieving a draw against the Under-16 men's teams of Austria and win over Norway in an unofficial U-16 World Cup tournament in Nice, France in 1998.
He was appointed player-coach of the country's first professional football team, Auckland Kingz, participating in the Australian Soccer League for two seasons before retiring in 2001, having been named Oceania's Player of the Century ahead of Frank Farina (Australia) and Christian Karembeu (France, of New Caledonia descent).
[4] Made his A-international debut for New Zealand against Kuwait on 16 October 1980 in the friendly international Merdeka Tournament in Malaysia aged 17 years and 291 days.
[4] In the final stages in Spain, 19-year-old Rufer was the youngest member of the squad, appearing in all three group losses, against Scotland, the Soviet Union and Brazil.