Young Pioneer Tours is pleased to announce we have signed a one-year deal to become the Official Tour Partner of CONIFA, the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, a global acting non-profit organisation that supports representatives of international football teams from nations, de facto nations, regions, minority peoples and sports isolated territories.

For us at YPT this partnership was a no-brainer, with our love for Unrecognised Countries and football both well known.

YPT is continuing to pioneer travel to Unrecognised Countries, from Transnistria to South Ossetia, Western Sahara to Somaliland and of course Iraqi Kurdistan.

We are also promoting our football specialist tours to North Korea to take in live World Cup qualifying matches, play matches against the locals and visit the football training college, and we’re keeping a keen eye on countries who are not members of FIFA such as the Pacific island country of Nauru.

Gareth Johnson of Young Pioneer Tours is looking forward to working with CONIFA, adding: “I personally love football and travel to obscure places, so CONIFA are a dream partner for us. I am sincerely excited about us both achieving great things from this partnership.”

In 2019 CONIFA has developed their women’s football programme and organised the hugely successful Sportsbet.io European Football Cup tournament taking place in Artsakh, won by South Ossetia.

Sascha Duerkop, CONIFA General Secretary said: “We are delighted to team up with Young Pioneer Tours in 2020. We were very excited to hear about their work in taking people all around the world, and their ethos was very similar to ours, so the partnership makes a lot of sense. We are sure that our CONIFA followers will make good use of their services and that it will be the start of a successful working relationship.”

Heading into 2020 we will be looking at taking groups to the CONIFA 2020 World Cup, details soon to be announced, and will be announcing more details of how Pioneers can get involved with CONIFA and vice versa, supporting the work of CONIFA and the teams and players from around the world.

Media Information
For more information on YPT’s football programmes and tours to Unrecognised Countries contact john@youngpioneertours.com

For more information on CONIFA and its work to support football around the globe contact Cassie Whittell, Director of Media & Communications on media@conifa.org