Located on the NSW Central Coast, the Euro-inspired International Football School will take students from Years 5-10.

Those behind the ambitious not-for-profit project say the school is modelled on similar institutions operating in France and could be the first of many across Australia.

Former Mariners foundation player and fans’ favourite Andre Gumprecht recently joined the coaching staff, likening the program to his days growing up in East Germany.

Currently employed as a FFA Skill Acquisition Specialist in Newcastle, Gumprecht said football-specific schools had the potential to revolutionise the sport in Australia.

“My professional career and my passion for football I put this down to the way I grew up in East Germany,” he said.

“There were football schools everywhere so you were able to be trained by the best of the best and also do your schooling.

“In the modern world if you want to become a professional footballer you need to put extra effort in. Parents need to be committed and the young players need to be committed – there is a lot of pressure.

“It means a lot of talented kids are not going to make it because parents just don’t have the time for that level of commitment.

“My parents never had time to take me to football training – they had to work. But I had the perfect opportunity to follow my passion because I was in a professional soccer school.

“From the age of 10 I trained every day and some days twice. I was lucky because in the age group 10-13 this is a critical period. This is the age bracket where you lay the foundation – because this is the age bracket where you learn your skills the best and the quickest.”

Gumprecht, who is close to completing his FFA A Licence will join former Mariners teammate Brad Porter and former Matilda Joey Peters on the coaching staff. Overseeing the program is Football Technical Director and Football Hall Of Fame inductee, Julie Dolan.

The IFS recently received Board of Studies approval and is expecting an initial student intake of just over 200 with the entire student body involved in a five day-a-week football development program.

The man behind the IFS, CEO Paul Chapman, admits to being a relatively new convert to the game after years in the education and IT industry.

But Chapman said his revealed that countries at the forefront of football development integrated school and football.

“The biggest difference between what we’re doing and I suppose any other sports high school is that every student in the school will be in a football program,” he said.

“The criteria we’ve set on students coming to the school is that first and foremost they need to be passionate and they need to be coachable. Obviously we’re very dedicated to football as a potential pathway for them down the track.

“The reality of that is we are attracting some fairly high level players and we’ve found that probably 90 per cent of those kids who are enrolling are on an elite pathway already.

Mariners’ fan Chapman said he found a kindred spirit in Gumprecht when the two began talking about his vision for the school.

“The funny thing is when I met up with Andre and had a good long chat with him about where I wanted to go with this he said, ‘look these schools are like we have in Germany, they’re everywhere, I went to one as a kid’,” he said.

“From my observations there are pathways in Australia but most of them are after hours and it puts families at a disadvantage because they’ve got to juggle an enormous number of other things on top of football.

“We’ll actually being twice as much time on the park than most other schools that run a football program.”