During their big win over the Blue Devils, the Vukovi Belgrade had a very special guest. IFAF’s president Tommy Wiking was present at the stadium, where he joined the officials in the coin toss. During his stay in Belgrade, he spent some time with the Serbian football teams and CEFL representatives; a day earlier he was in the Assembly of Belgrade, where he spoke briefly on Serbian football and the current situation in it. He was also kind enough to find some time for CEFL Online and its readers.

You’ve been the IFAF president since 2006, how would you say the sport has progressed since then?
I don’t know if I’m the one to judge myself and my work, but from my point of view it’s been good. We increased membership numbers fairly good and we’ve seen new countries come out to play, and we have established new programs and developments. I think it’s been fairly good.

Where do you see the sport now and what are you planning on developing further?
Oh, we have really a lot of things. Our three main targets we’re working is to, one, become IOC recognized, recognized by the Olympic Committee, and then eventually become an Olympic sport. Other is to develop our members, the level of the football they play; that depends if you go to Germany, it’s one level to develop from, or to Japan, or if you go to Serbia, then it’s something else, different things they need…

When you say develop the member nations, would you say the main focus is the junior competition?
Not our main focus in general, but for our development program, the main focus is junior’s, not the tournament, but development, because that’s where we think we have the most success and we can have the most long term development. If you try to develop the seniors, maybe they’re going to play for another two years, three years… Juniors have maybe 10 years, that’s why we’re trying to emphasize the juniors, to teach them the right things in the right age.

So the Junior Championships this is year is definitely the main event for this year, are they going to be the main event in the future years?
This year, yes. But no; it’s going to one of our most important events, yes, but the main event’s going to be… next year we’re hopefully going to have the Women’s Tackle Football Championship, also the Flag World Championship and the Senior Men Tackle World Championship. I would hope the men and the women would be of equal importance, but of course I think the men’s going to be the more important one.

Mentioning the Junior’s Championship, do you think the German player who got drafted by the Patriots, Sebastian Vollmer, is an exception, or will it maybe become more common?
I think you’re going to see it more and more. You can look at any other sport you want, you can look at ice hockey, basketball, they always said: “No you can’t have Europeans, they’re not hungry”. And eventually when they started to understand there’s good talent outside…

Do you think it’s possible that, at some point in the future, a player gets drafted straight from Europe?
I think there are players right now already. It’s mainly the question of mentality from the American coaches. If they wanted, they could draft European players not from college football… As soon as they understand they can maybe have an edge on another team if they bring Europeans, they will bring them in.

Something about CEFL football, how much do you know about it?
The organization so far is good, the quality, I haven’t seen any games. It will be interesting to see the game between the Vukovi and the Austrian team. I know the Austrian team is a fairly good Austrian team. It’s going to be a good measurement of the quality of the Serbian team. Let’s see and find out. In all honesty I think they’re going to have a tough time.

You said that Serbian football is developing quickly, any other countries that are doing that?
Yes there are, and most of them are actually here in Europe. Poland is developing extremely quick as Serbia did, Hungary has a fairly good development from basically nothing to a stable federation… And of course we have our friends in South America where we’ve seen the same kind of development, where they had nothing and then all of a sudden they had 10-15 teams play.

Not many in Africa?
No. So far I know, we’ve had contact with some countries, but there are no real american football teams. They play flag in some countries.

You also mentioned the need for the Serbian federation problems to be resolved; do you have any ideas how that can be achieved?
I have lots of ideas how it can be achieved, but the main thing, I think, is that both sides need to understand that they will both lose not being one federation… They need to talk to each other, they need to find common grounds. Otherwise both are going to suffer from it.