Like you, we are real football fans. We’ve travelled the globe supporting the Socceroos – and we know a thing or two about what football fans want from a true “tournament” experience.

We’ve already operated travel packages to several World Cups, Asian Cups and Women’s World Cups, not to mention countless World Cup Qualifiers across the Asian region and most recently in Honduras.

In South Africa in 2010 and Brazil in 2014, we managed the travel arrangements for groups of 500 Australian football fans. Our experience in delivering for round ball fans is second to none – just ask anyone who has been on our tours.

Much as we love football, our overall goal is about creating memories for you and your friends. We want to make fans so fulfilled that they choose to travel with us again and again.

Ultimately, our mission is to make your travel experience as smooth and as enjoyable as possible. We’ll shoulder the logistical nightmare of organising all the important details, allowing you to concentrate on the football and having the time of your life.

We are the only major Australian tour operator that is Australian owned. All we do is football, and we are excited to share our passion for travel and the Socceroos with you in Russia.

We’ve travelled to Russia on 4 occasions to prepare for our tours and have identified a number of challenges for fans particular to this event:

• The language barrier: Only 3% of the Russian population can speak English fluently – and the Cyrillic alphabet makes it difficult to find destinations and essential services. Outside of Moscow and St Petersburg, English proficiency is almost non-existent. The 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup and 2018 FIFA World Cup will be particularly difficult for fans to navigate their way around and between cities. For example, it will be almost impossible to find a Russian taxi driver who speaks English, and it will be difficult to communicate destinations because of the driver will most likely only be able to read Cyrillic.

• The size of Russia: The sheer size of Russia, and the distance between the cities., means it will be very challenging for fans to move independently around the country.

• Accommodation: Outside of the major tourist cities, it will be difficult to find international standard accommodation – and the accommodation that is available remains quite limited.

• Personal security: Although Russia is a fairly safe destination, as is the case when travelling abroad generally, fans will need to be mindful of their personal security.

The benefit of travelling with Green & Gold Army is that we take these problems off your hands. Come with us and you will:

• be guaranteed accommodation at quality controlled centrally located international-standard hotels.
• have your logistically tricky and costly internal air transfers taken care of.
• have access to qualified bi-lingual tour guides as well as Australian hosts.

You will also experience all the other benefits of travelling with the Green & Gold Army, including:

• organised pre-match functions.
• security of group travel.
• the atmosphere and excitement of the group experience.

While our tours are football focused – we know that’s why you’re here in the first place – we also design our tours so you can experience and uncover the sights and culture of the host destination. We also want you to get to know and develop friendships with like-minded Australian football fans.

Our pre/post-match functions are renowned for being fun (even a little raucous!) and are the perfect way to build up to the match or celebrate a victory. Our welcome functions are designed so you can get to know your fellow travellers and develop friendships with them at the beginning of the tour.

A whole range of Australian football fans travel with us – for the 2014 Brazil World Cup, our youngest traveller was 4 years old and our oldest traveller was 84!

We have lots of father-son combinations, groups of friends, couples and solo travellers. Our travelling groups are very diverse and you bound to meet lots of like-minded people: if you’re looking for a group to party with, you’ll find them; if you’re looking for a group to join for a nice dinner, you’ll find them.

If you’re a female looking to tour with us, rest-assured there will be many other females travelling – around 25% of our tour groups are female.

If you’re a solo traveller, we haven’t forgotten you: we offer a solo-match program where we match you with another solo traveller of similar age to room-share. This keeps the cost down for you and also means you meet a fellow traveller straight away.