He coached in 23 nations on four continents. Otto Pfister, now 88 years old, hates nothing more than boredom - be it over coffee in Sargans or at communion in Kinshasa.
As a young altar boy in Cologne, Otto Pfister was eight or nine years old. He devoured all the literature he could get his hands on in the church library in Cologne. This included Karl May, one of his favorite authors, who stimulated Otto's imagination with stories about unknown countries. Little Otto's desire for distant lands was kindled. And it still slumbers in him today. Otto only wanted one thing: to get away, to see and discover new things.
As Pfister sits at Sargans train station for an interview with blue Sport, some 80 years after his first literary discoveries, he simply says: "Look, young man. There's nothing going on here. Switzerland is paradise. But nothing is happening." Pfister moved to the Rhine Valley for his wife. There should always be something going on. Pure action to make him feel good.
The fact that Pfister has seen so much, "that was a lot of luck," he says. Because he could kick better than most and stood out in a test match, he was allowed to move from Cologne to Chiasso, where he could even earn more. "I thought: Chiasso? Not Africa, but at least it's a first step." He later trained in Glarus, Vaduz, Moutier, St. Gallen and Chur. Enjoying football, with nice people - but was this the big world he was aiming for?
At 34, he asked himself: "What's the point?" He was a semi-professional coach and earned some extra money as a business economist. That couldn't be everything.
Hutus versus Tutsis
Then fate struck. Pfister was on vacation in Catolica, Italy, sitting next to an employee of the German Foreign Office. The two chatted - and through the official's mediation, Pfister was given the chance to become the national coach of Rwanda; they were looking for someone there and Germans had a good reputation. The only condition: they had to speak French. Pfister could speak at least fragments of it. In addition, a three-month preparatory course was planned, during which Pfister could also learn English. "You learn the rest in everyday life anyway," says Pfister. Learning by doing.
In 1972, Pfister was the national coach in Rwanda, 34 years old, freshly flown in as player-coach of FC Chur, and had to succeed. He, the wise marabou, as the people respectfully called him. Pfister quickly sensed that conflicts were simmering - conflicts between the Hutu government and the Tutsi minority that would cost more than a million people their lives 20 years later, in the mid-1990s. Pfister is there to train. And yet he says with disillusionment: "I have seen countless cars and houses torched."
"Hands off money, politics, religion"
Pfister tried to overcome the impossible. He says: "I've always kept my hands off money, politics and religion." He is trying to do this in Rwanda, for example, by creating a balance between Hutus and Tutsis in the national team - no one should feel disadvantaged.
He made this the mantra of his coaching career - later also in Senegal, Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Zaire, today's Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. He coached all of these national teams until the end of the 90s.
He won the Africa Cup with the Ivory Coast U17 team, the U17 World Cup with Ghana and later advanced to the A final of the Africa Cup with the Ghanaians - and became a trendsetter: "Otto Pfister style" is the name given to the way Pfister still wears his trousers well below his hips today.
Eto'o's consolation
In 2008, after the Africa Cup final defeat with Cameroon against Egypt, Cameroon's superstar Samuel Eto'o offers consolation: "He said to me: 'Don't take it so hard. When you've grown up in such misery like many of us players, losing the final isn't so bad. That made a deep impression on me and has stayed with me," says Pfister. Like so many things that Pfister was able to experience.
The football lover has also always needed something on his adventures: Nerves of steel. During his time in Zaire, dictator Mobutu, one of the most bloodthirsty butchers of his time, summoned him to his palace several times in the middle of the night. Only to casually tell him that he did not particularly like the head of state of his next opponent, Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos. "You better win, otherwise you can go straight to the airport."
After all, it was Mobutu who brought the "Rumble in the Jungle", probably the most famous boxing match in history between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, to Zaire in 1974. "Ali, bomaye!" Ali, destroy him. Pfister later worked with one or two of the organizers.
Pfister says he can only laugh about the pressure that coaches in Western Europe feel. Since then, he has no longer felt the attraction of training in Switzerland or Germany. "What would I want to do somewhere in the 2nd division?"
Nevertheless, his interest in football knows no bounds. What Pfister can see, he sees: Super League, Bundesliga, Premier League, Ligue 1, La Liga and everything else. "The decoders cost me almost 150 francs," says the football lover and laughs. Every penny is worth it to him, even though he has experienced more than others can watch on TV.
Mobutu's weakness for Maradona
Speaking of Mobutu: as merciless and domineering as the despot may have been, he had his weak points, particularly for the Argentinian national football team and its genius: Diego Armando Maradona. "So when I went to Mobutu and told him how great I thought Argentina was, he immediately gave us three weeks of training camp in Argentina in perfect conditions." Pfister tells the story with a twinkle in his eye.
However, Mobutu's culinary preferences were not quite so funny: the dictator liked to serve exotic dishes. Pfister shrugs his shoulders and says: "Well, then we had monkey brains."
