Conifa represents millions of people around the world who are passionate about football but do not feel represented by any of the 209 teams that are members of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), which are selected on the basis of membership in the United Nations.
The teams playing in this year’s World Football Cup are a mix of unrecognized states, stateless peoples, disputed territories, and distinct cultural regions. “[A]ll of them play the beautiful game and use it to get together and keep their culture, history and community alive,” said Conifa on their website.
Only twelve teams are taking part this year. Some are not able to attend because of financial or logistic problems and some because of the difficulties attending the tournament in the host region of Abkhazia, a state that declared independence from Georgia in 1990. It is recognized by just a handful of nations, including Russia and Venezuela. Many governments advise against travel to Abkhazia.
Georgia considers entering Abkhazia from Russia to be a violation of its territorial integrity. Players who do so would be banned from entering Georgia in the future and may face criminal charges.
The opening ceremony was held Saturday evening and the match between Kurdistan and Székely Land will be played on Sunday afternoon. Székely Land is an enclave of Hungarians living in Romania.
With Kurdistan and Székely Land in their group is Koreans in Japan, ethnic Koreans brought to Japan as forced labour when Tokyo colonially ruled Korea. Kurdistan will play them on Tuesday afternoon.
Also competing is Western Armenia, a region of eastern Turkey that was home to Armenians before the genocide, and Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia that declared independence in 1991 but has not been recognized by any country.
The first World Football Cup was played in 2014 in Östersund, Sweden and saw County of Nice, a unique cultural region in southern France, take home the championship trophy.
Kurdistan is ranked 5th out of 23 Conifa members.
The tournament will be played over one week with the final match taking place on June 5.
