Former Premier League football star Dave Kitson has been named as the new Nauru manager, with the announcement coming via the Nauru Soccer Federation and their Director of International Development YPT’s Gareth Johnson.

The news was announced today via press release on the NSF website. It marks the latest in a deluge of new announcements from the NSF since their foundation in January of this year. This has included deals to make the Nauru kit, Giordano as their sponsor, as well as a potential friendly against American Samoa – the team immortalized by the movie “Next Goal Wins”.

Nauru and Young Pioneer Tours

Young Pioneer Tours have been running tours to Nauru since 2017, with our founder Gareth Johnson leading all, but one to the country. During this period he began getting involved with helping to jump start the football/soccer scene in Nauru in partnership with Paul Watson. This finally came to bear fruit this January with the formation of the NSF.

You can read about football in Nauru here.

This is not the first foray into the football world for Young Pioneer Tours with us having sponsored CONIFA, a team in Zanzibar, as well as Next Step FC and Angkor City FC of the Cambodian Second Division.

A further link here being Charlie Pomroy of Angkor City FC having been made national coach of Nauru.

Dave Kitson, Young Pioneer Tours and Nauru

Dave Kitson first got involved with Young Pioneer Tours back in 2020, with a mutual interest in travel and football providing the initial link. This actually led to Kitson featuring in the YPT Life podcast.

Since then the parties have stayed in touch, with Johnson confirming that they had been in talks about the Nauru position for a number of years.

The only question now? Just how far this team can take Nauru.