\u201cWhen I step on to the pitch everything else is automatically erased from my mind,\u201d says the captain of Afghan Women United, Fatima Haidari, when asked how football helps her cope with the traumas she has suffered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI train, I play, and a fire inside me is lit, not just because of the power that I feel at that moment as a player, but because I feel I have many other girls with me. It\u2019s like I\u2019m taking their hands. Like I\u2019m playing with them. It\u2019s not just for me, and I feel powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haidari is back in Italy, after the first matches played by Afghan Women United. The team is made up of players forced to flee their homeland following the Taliban takeover in 2021, players scattered across the world in Portugal, Australia, England and Italy.<\/p>\n
It was founded by Fifa as a way for those to be able to continue to play and represent their country, part of a three pillar strategy of supporting women and girls in Afghanistan, engaging in diplomatic efforts to advocate for the right of women to take part in sport and providing opportunities for those players<\/a> who have escaped the Taliban\u2019s brutal oppression of women and are resettled abroad.<\/p>\n There had been complications in the buildup to the inaugural Fifa Unites: Women\u2019s Series, a four-team tournament organised to give the team their first fixtures. The rejection of the team\u2019s visas<\/a> to enter the United Arab Emirates forced a last minute pivot to Morocco that meant pre-tournament training opportunities were cut short. On Sunday 26 October though, as the team stepped out onto the pitch at the Stade Municipal de Berrechid, to the west of Casablanca, nothing else mattered.<\/p>\n For those that have followed the journey of these women, of their brave decision to fight for the right to play, of the abuses many suffered at the hands of the former Afghanistan<\/a> football federation (AFF) president, of their high-risk escapes from their homeland and of their battle to integrate into new cultures and communities and overcome the many barriers and prejudicial treatment refugees face, it was impossible not to get caught up in emotion that poured forth.<\/p>\n The founder of the national team and first woman to work for the AFF, Khalida Popal<\/a>, was among those in the stands, overcome, fearing she would faint. \u201cEverything felt unreal,\u201d she says. \u201cI was having flashbacks, my mind switching between the new generation standing there in front of me, tall and loud and proud, and the first women\u2019s national team to play for Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n Fifa\u2019s chief women\u2019s football officer, Dame Sarai-Paea Bareman, could not travel to the tournament as she is pregnant, but she was also filled with emotion and cites the tournament as \u201ccertainly one of the highlights, if not the highlight, of my 10-year career within Fifa.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the driving motivators of this entire project was helping give these women their voices back. No one should have their voices or futures ripped away from them, particularly for their involvement in a sport. It\u2019s crazy to even comprehend that. We\u2019ve been able to restore their platform and their voices.\u201d<\/p>\n Afghan Women United\u2019s players have had to show great resilience on their journey. Photograph: Jalal Morchidi\/EPA<\/p>\n Playing with many emotions swirling was not an easy prospect. \u201cYou feel the heaviness on your heart, on your body, on your mind, but then you get to exhibit what you\u2019re about and who you are through your play, your game,\u201d says Haidari. \u201cWe believed that we mattered and that we would be able to show the world who we are, as women who come from a country where women are now nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n Haidari struggles to talk too much about her own evacuation and leaving her family behind. She still has nightmares. She had to force herself to rebuild in Italy, waking up one morning and making a conscious decision to fight for the new life she had in front of her.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom that moment I made my mindset that I had left my culture, my home and my family behind for a reason. That the reason wasn\u2019t just about my own freedom, it was also about showing the world Afghan women deserve happiness and that freedom too. This is the second time in history that this has happened to the women of Afghanistan and I want to be an example of not giving up, of perseverance.\u201d<\/p>\n Popal adds: \u201cThe stories of our players are stories of resilience. They are inspiring people and challenging the narrative around refugees.<\/p>\n \u201cThese young women have horrible stories relating to what they have gone through in Afghanistan, how they were evacuated, what it\u2019s like to be a refugee and their deep traumas. They have not been able to take a break, to pause and process, they have had to quickly integrate into communities and learn languages. They are working, they are playing football, they are studying, but they are also giving back to their communities and contributing to society. It shows that when you invest in, support and trust refugees, they give back.\u201d<\/p>\n Building a professional environment and support system around players that have spent so much of their lives battling was a key part of the strategy around the team from the beginning. \u201cWe really left no stone unturned. The whole setup was world-class and we wanted the player to feel that level of support,\u201d says Bareman. \u201cThen there was the support that comes around that and safeguarding was a huge, huge element.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Moving the Goalposts<\/p>\n No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women\u2019s football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In their opening game against Chad, Australia-based forward Manozh Noori put the newly-formed team ahead from the spot in the fourth minute. \u201cI\u2019m already full of hormones and very emotional,\u201d says Bareman, who played for Samoa through her mother but was born in New Zealand. \u201cI was watching it with my family at home on the big screen and I celebrated as if it was the opening match of the World Cup and New Zealand had scored at Eden Park. I leapt out of my chair and screamed, it was amazing. There\u2019s this juxtaposition between the pure football, the prowess of the player, the celebration of the goal, and everything else surrounding the team and what it means more broadly.\u201d<\/p>\n Captain Fatima Haidari wants to help inspire people and change the narrative around refugees. Photograph: Jalal Morchidi\/EPA<\/p>\n They went on to lose 6-1 to Chad and lost 4-0 to Tunisia, the only team in the tournament with a Fifa ranking, and then secured a stunning 7-0 victory over Libya, a team they connected with through shared struggle.<\/p>\n \u201cAs an athlete and as a footballer, I can\u2019t say that results weren\u2019t important,\u201d says Haidari, who scored the seventh . \u201cFor us as athletes they were important, but they were also important because of the message they sent. After the win the reaction was totally different, from people inside and outside of Afghanistan. People were thinking of us differently, they were celebrating us, thanking us, and telling us we deserved what we were achieving. Messages and comments didn\u2019t just come from women, and that should remind us all that men in the country are suffering too, they are like prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n The Afghan Women United project is a year-long pilot but lots has been taken from this first foray into unknown territory. \u201cYou have to rip off the band-aid sometimes and try things for the first time. There\u2019s not an excuse to say we shouldn\u2019t move forward and we shouldn\u2019t push. Now, we have a huge foundation to build upon and there\u2019s no better group of athletes that we could have built that base with. On one of the earliest calls with the team, we said: this is about you, it\u2019s about your journey, but also what you guys are doing in this project is helping set up the future for the way that Fifa and football will act.\u201d<\/p>\n The next step is ensuring all the players receive ongoing support and ensuring those that want to try refereeing or coaching are provided with those opportunities. That sits alongside the different debriefs, the footballing ones and those looking at the project more broadly.<\/p>\n Haidari has many messages she would like to leave on, one is to the world, to not forget Afghanistan amid the horrific conflicts taking place elsewhere in the world. \u201cFor the little girls, and boys, that dream of living, studying, working and having families in a free country, please do not forget about Afghanistan,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are watching the elimination or erasing of the futures of whole generations.\u201d<\/p>\n But her main message is to the women and girls of her country: \u201cNever lose your hope and never give up. For as long as this team exists and beyond, we will keep fighting for you and your freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen I step on to the pitch everything else is automatically erased from my mind,\u201d says the captain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-272823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}