Looking To Qualify For Olympics, Iran's Women Footballers Fighting A Battle To Stay Relevant

All over the world, football is a game fought between two teams on the pitch but that is not the case with Iran women¡¯s football team. For close to four decades now, they have been mostly fighting off the pitch for survival.

As is the case with many countries around the world these days, Iranian women¡¯s football went backwards, or close to being non-existent, following the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Football had been widely played before the revolution but strict laws that subjected women to wear headscarf in public meant the outdoor sport was snuffed out of women¡¯s life.

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From then on it has been a constant, long battle, first against the political hardliners back home and then against the global governing body. FIFA imposed a ban on playing with the hijab all of a sudden in 2011.

However, armed with the mental strength to fight the odds and an educated coach-cum-activist Katayoun ¡®Kat¡¯ Khosrowyar as the leader driving change, Iranian women are ready to continue their struggle for the empowerment of women through sport.

Already into the second round of 2020 Olympic qualifiers, a historic feat for the national side which came into being after 2005, the Iran team was here to participate in the four-nation Gold Cup. Their stay was short as they could not reach the final.

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On the sidelines of their practice session, coach Maryam Azmoun spoke to TOI, with team doctor Farinaz Fahimipour doubling up as the interpreter, about the difficulty in sustaining and developing women¡¯s football in Iran.

¡°Playing football as a woman in Iran is in itself an achievement as we have been going through a lot of changes socially and politically for the last four decades. Situations are definitely improving but there¡¯s still a lot to be done to take women¡¯s football to somewhere close to where our men¡¯s football is,¡± said Maryam.

¡°They (men) are playing at the top level professionally for long. Some even play outside the country, in many European leagues, so they are up there. But for women, even though we have a senior football league we don¡¯t have any age-group domestic league.

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So it¡¯s really difficult to scout players for the national side. And sometimes even the senior league is stopped because of many issues ranging from political to financial. So we are happy to be where we are now (with FIFA ranking of 60).¡±

Though society as such is not against women playing football, the fundamentalists and the judiciary at home and FIFA officials in Zurich have been alternatively unfavourable to women¡¯s involvement in football.

¡°There were also reservations about mixing of men and women in a women¡¯s team set-up, so we used to lose knowledgeable males from team management,¡± Maryam explained.