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‘Sport is for all’: Ignored by Fifa, the Afghan women’s team play on in Australia':-
Barred from the World Cup, Fatima Yousufi’s side will contest the Hope Cup in Melbourne while they wait for official recognitionwww.theguardian.com/football/2023/jul/17/sport-is-for-all-ignored-by-fifa-the-afghan-womens-team-play-on-in-australia
a snippet...'It may not be Stadium Australia or Eden Park, but two days before the Women’s World Cup, CB Smith Reserve in outer north Melbourne will play host to a significant clash of its own: the inaugural Hope Cup. Contested by the former Afghan women’s national team and “Football Empowerment”, a team representing the city’s refugee and migrant communities, the Hope Cup will be imbued with its own symbolism on the eve of the tournament.
“It’s going to be a very exciting, and important, day,” says Fatima Yousufi, a goalkeeper and the Afghan captain.
The Afghan players and staff fled to Australia amid the chaotic fall of Kabul in August 2021 and have mostly resettled in Melbourne, where they have been supported by A-League club Melbourne Victory to play as a team in Football Victoria’s third division. But despite constituting the closest thing to an Afghan women’s representative team, with women’s sport banned by Taliban authorities, Fifa has refused to recognise them.
The Afghan men’s team has resumed playing in Fifa-sanctioned competitions, most recently at the 2023 Central Asian Football Association Nations Cup in June. But the Taliban’s crackdown on women’s participation in society has only become more extreme. “The men are playing, why not the women’s team?” Yousufi says.'
