Kiel trainer in the South Pacific
©VFF
The island state of Vanuatu has a national football team and recently also its first professional club. Kiel-born coach Lars Hopp looks after both teams. In an interview with Transfermarkt, the coach talks about the footballing prospects in the South Pacific and the country’s model professional.
As a German with Norwegian roots, Hopp has celebrated the festival with a Christmas tree and common traditions in recent years. This year things will be a little different; in summer temperatures in Vanuatu. “I have to say, I have more of a holiday feeling here than Christmas feelings, but we as a family are looking forward to Christmas. Christmas songs are already playing on the radio, but I haven’t seen any Santa Claus in any shops or on the street yet. I’m actually very excited about the traditions that are lived in Vanuatu.”
A good two months ago, Hopp took over the Vanuatu national team and the Vanuatu United FC club at the same time. The German Christian Happel, sports director of the newly founded club, was responsible for this commitment. “We’ve been in contact for years and he absolutely convinced me about this project. I was attracted by the mix of the exotic and at the same time the possibility of building something sustainable and long-term. There’s nothing better than combining work with good people in a beautiful environment. Just the view of the wide Pacific every day puts you in a good mood.”
Football in Vanuatu: “The association is grateful for every suggestion”
Hopp not only loves adventure, as a football teacher he also sees himself as a development worker in a certain form. He worked for the Estonian Football Association for eleven years and most recently worked for FIFA in Uzbekistan. “When you leave Germany for the first time, you quickly realize what privileges you actually enjoy in Germany,” he says. “In both Estonia and Uzbekistan I was able to learn that you first have to understand the people and the culture before you can start talking about football.”
As far as football in Vanuatu is concerned, the work ahead at 160th in the FIFA world rankings will demand a lot from Coach Hopp. Where do you start and where do you end with a footballing largely unknown slate? “The association is open and grateful for every new suggestion, also because professional structures do not yet exist in many areas,” says Hopp. “The aim of my work is to establish structures, comparable to building a house, that will remain in place even if I no longer work in Vanuatu at some point.”
Lars Hopp has been in charge of Vanuatu’s selection since October
The challenges that Hopp had to overcome in the first few weeks already made the coach smile. “We’re trying to adjust some seemingly easy adjustments. For example, there’s currently only one groundskeeper in the entire association, which is what the football pitches look like. Unfortunately, many people here have the ‘if I don’t come today, I’ll come tomorrow’ mentality. This of course creates some challenges when you have to meet certain deadlines. What I find very strange is the fact that many people don’t have a fixed cell phone number. They constantly change their numbers when their cell phone credit is used up. That’s why communication is ongoing often via Facebook. But we are gradually trying to change this with our professional players.”
“For the most part, the boys have known each other for years.”
Hopp is impressed by the cohesion in the country. “I haven’t met such warm and open people for a long time. A year ago, a severe earthquake shook the country. A market square was destroyed, so the market is now held in the parking lots in front of our stadium. A sentence that is lived here is: Prosperity and happiness are measured by the share that you are willing to give away or share with others. There are almost no homeless people here. Everyone helps each other. At a tournament, I was surprised that one of our players put ten pieces of cake on a plate from dinner at the hotel and Afterwards I found out that he brought the cake to the security staff as a way of thanking them for their work.
Bolts in Vanuatu: Lars Hopp sent us his impressions
Many smaller countries often rely on the possibility of recruiting players from abroad with roots in the country. An opportunity that Vanuatu lacks, after all, the number of potential national players abroad is rather small. But Hopp sees this as anything but a problem, but rather an opportunity to develop the national team more continuously and, above all, with more depth, since almost all of the players are on the island. “There are Vanuatu players in Australia and New Zealand. The only question is whether it makes sense to fly them in for extra costs or whether it might be more advisable to work with the boys here on site. We had ten debutants at the tournament in Papua New Guinea. Most of the boys have known each other for years, and that shows on the pitch. There is a lot of togetherness, which is also reflected in the mentality. Everyone runs an extra meter for each other.”
Vanuatu United FC is making professional football possible in the island nation for the first time
To ensure that the development plan is fully successful, Hopp is also starting from the grassroots; at the club level. The 49-year-old consciously decided to take over the role of head coach of a club team, Vanuatu United FC, in addition to the national team. The club was founded this year in a joint effort between the government and the football association. With the club he will also take part in the OFC Pro League next year, which is the successor competition to the OFC Champions League. The winner qualifies for the annual FIFA Intercontinental Cup and the Club World Cup.
“The OFC Pro League consists of the flagships of the respective Oceanic countries and I am very proud that we can represent Vanuatu,” says Hopp. “Thanks to the support of the government and the association, we are the only club on the island that can work under professional conditions. Thanks to Vanuatu United FC, it is now possible for young talents locally to become professionals without having to move to Australia or New Zealand. Everyone in the club is looking forward to the OFC Pro League because it allows us to compete with the best Oceanic clubs.”
The founding of a purely professional club is a historic step for the island state. The background is that many players currently still have a regular professional activity and football is viewed more as a kind of ambitious hobby. “At almost all clubs, the players have a regular job and only devote themselves to football after work. We at Vanuatu United FC enable the boys to concentrate fully on football. A player earns between 1000 and 1500 euros per month on average. The United in our name was deliberately chosen because we want to unite the country and at the same time become a kind of cooperation partner for the other clubs so that we can help them in terms of player or coach development.”
Vanuatu’s model professional: Kaltak “is aware of his role”
It is very important that the next generation is shown a perspective. An important driving force is Brian Kaltak (32), who is under contract with Australian first division club Perth Glory and has already celebrated the championship in Australia twice in the past. “Brian is an absolute professional, but at the same time he is extremely aware of his role as a role model. He has founded an academy and wants to show young players how to make it into professional football. From day one he helped me a lot and gave me a lot of contacts.”
While football tends to live in the shadows in many countries in Oceania, things are different in Vanuatu, where the love of football is lived out. “I recently visited a village in the hinterland,” says Hopp. “The pitch consisted of two simple goals and there were trees and bushes around it. Some of the field players played without shoes and one of the goalkeepers without gloves, but they still played with an extremely high level of passion, with a high intensity and a high tempo. What particularly impressed me was this incredibly deep love of the game. As an outsider, you felt how much the players here love the game.”
Classic football day in Vanuatu is Saturday. “Usually two or three league games take place in a stadium one after the other,” says Hopp. “The families buy a day ticket and then stay on site all day. There is no rivalry or hatred in football. Fans from club A sit next to fans from club B. Everything is very peaceful because the focus is on entertainment and enjoying the game.”
Hopp sees a lot of positive things from slowing down in Vanuatu and consciously paying attention to his fellow human beings. “It could certainly be good in many countries or the community in general if more people paid attention to their fellow human beings and really helped each other, and by that I don’t mean likes on social media, but real actions in everyday life. The Christmas season can certainly be a good opportunity for this.”
By Henrik Stadnischenko