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    They Shot at Her. They Forced Her From Her Home. She Won’t Stop Fighting for Girls.

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    Khalida Popal, the former captain of the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team, woke up on the floor of her apartment near Copenhagen, drenched in sweat and shaking.She had collapsed and couldn’t speak. An ambulance rushed to her.It was two years ago last month, and the Taliban were taking control of Afghanistan. Female soccer players on the national team Popal helped create in 2007 were desperate to leave the country, fearing that the Taliban would kill them for playing the sport.Players were deluging Popal with requests for help, and she felt smothered by guilt. For more than 15 years, much of that period spent in exile, she had encouraged Afghan girls to participate in all areas of society, including sports, jobs and education.The message was everything the Taliban despised.“I feel responsible for these girls,” Popal said later. “I’d rather die than turn my back on them.”So on that blue-sky summer afternoon in 2021, Popal had a panic attack and thought she might be dying. But in a show of her resilience in a life marked by trauma, she waved away the medical workers and returned to her desk to continue coordinating an evacuation of players and their families from Kabul, the Afghan capital.Relying on a network she built through her activism, she helped rescue 87 people, including the senior national team. Months later, another 130.Popal is pushing world soccer officials to let the exiled Afghan women’s team represent the country in international competition. In July, she was in Melbourne for the Hope Cup, a game between the Afghan team and a team that represented the area’s migrants and refugees.Isabella Moore for The New York TimesNow Popal is on another mission, one that reached its height at this summer’s Women’s World Cup. She is trying to convince FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, to let players on the Afghan women’s national team represent their country again after the Taliban barred girls and women from playing sports.The players, after escaping Afghanistan with Popal’s help, are living in Australia, which hosted this year’s World Cup with New Zealand. Though the team is competing for the Melbourne Victory soccer club, FIFA refuses to recognize it as a national team because the Afghanistan Football Federation claims it does not exist. Under the Taliban, no women’s team does.“These players dreamed of playing football for Afghanistan and men just came and took that dream from them,” Popal said. “FIFA is saying, ‘We are sorry that you’ve lost your right to play football, girls, when you have done nothing to deserve it.’ It’s disgusting.”In an emailed statement, FIFA said it cannot recognize a national team unless it is first acknowledged by its national federation. FIFA has declared it a priority to ensure equal access to soccer without discrimination. But in Afghanistan’s case, it is just “monitoring the situation very closely,” according to its statement.A spokesman for the Afghanistan Football Federation said the organization could do nothing to help because the women’s national team dissolved when the players fled the country — an assertion the players reject.With coffee in hand and the energy of someone who has consumed far too much of it, Popal, 36, has been sharing the Afghan team’s story with everyone she can, in every way she can. While working for Right to Dream, a soccer nonprofit, and Girl Power, her own nonprofit, she organized a petition, which has been signed by more than 175,000 people since publishing online in late July. More than 100 politicians, across four countries, endorsed a letter she wrote to FIFA with the British parliamentarian Julie Elliott and Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot in the head by the Taliban when she was 15.Also, days before the World Cup began, Popal flew to Melbourne for a match that Melbourne Victory arranged, at her suggestion, between the exiled Afghan team and a team that represented the area’s migrants and refugees. They called the event the Hope Cup.Popal founded the Afghan women’s national team in 2007. Current members played in the Hope Cup in Melbourne in July.Isabella Moore for The New York TimesAbout 50 fans watched the Afghan players wave their nation’s flag and sing about their country. One Afghan wore a T-shirt that said, “Save our families,” because many players’ relatives were still hoping to receive humanitarian visas to live in Australia.Like a Hollywood publicist, Popal played cheerful yet determined host, rooting for the players, taking photos and speaking to reporters.“Khalida is reminding the world that we are still here, don’t forget us,” said Fati Yousufi, the Afghan team’s captain and goalkeeper. “I know a lot of us have said, ‘I want to be like Khalida one day, a strong and powerful woman.’”Anyone who wants to be like Popal should understand that her advocacy for the Afghan team has come with serious sacrifices.“It has taken a huge toll on her,” said Kelly Lindsey, an American whom Popal recruited to coach the Afghan national team in 2016. “But she won’t stop for a moment to take care of herself. Because if she did that, there would be no time for her to take care of others.”Creating the National TeamEven before the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, men would throw rocks at Popal when she played soccer in the street, claiming it was immoral for girls to play sports. Yet she always believed women could earn respect through soccer because it was a language men understood.During the Taliban’s first reign, from when Popal was age 9 to 14, she was stuck in a Pakistani refugee tent city, with soccer as her only outlet. When her family returned to Kabul in 2002 after a U.S.-led coalition drove out the Taliban, she was eager to grow the sport.Popal’s mother, Shokria Popal, thumbed through an album of photos from Khalida’s childhood. When Khalida was a girl, men threw rocks at her when she played soccer in the streets because they believed that women playing sports offended Islam.Her mother, Shokria Popal, a physical education teacher, helped recruit players, often contending with parents who called her a prostitute trying to destroy the culture. Teachers slapped Khalida in the face and tried to expel her for her work. But from the Popals’ efforts, high school teams were born. Five years later, the Afghanistan Football Federation accepted Khalida’s team as the women’s national team.It was too dangerous for the team to play in public because religious conservatives said the sportswear showed the shapes of women’s bodies, defying Islam. So the team practiced inside a NATO base, using hand-me-down equipment from the federation’s men’s teams and practicing on an active helipad. Helicopters kicked up dust that caked the players’ faces and coated their throats.The squad once lost an international match by 17-0. But to Popal, winning was not as important as the message.The team, which played its official matches outside the country, first made national news in 2010 when it played NATO soldiers in Kabul. Speaking to journalists, Popal denounced the Taliban. There was an immediate cost.Some of her teammates were forced to quit because their families hadn’t known that they were playing. Popal recalled receiving death threats, including from one caller who said he would cut her to pieces.Her father and one of her four brothers were slashed with knives and beaten with guns because, as the assailants said to them, they “were not real men for letting their daughter and sister play football,” her father, Timor Shah Popal, recalled.Popal at a training session in London in 2018.Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2011, Popal was working as the head of finance and women’s soccer at the otherwise all-male federation, trying to blend in with her colleagues by wearing baggy clothes and speaking in rough slang, when she complained on national television that the women’s team wasn’t getting enough support. She blamed corrupt sports officials for it.Days later, she said, a truck rammed into the car she was riding in. Uniformed men fired shots through the windows, but she was not physically harmed. Then, when the Afghanistan Olympic committee’s headquarters were vandalized, Popal was among those blamed.Though she denied involvement, the police issued a warrant for her arrest. Hours before the government barred her from traveling, she boarded a plane to India.The Death of a BrotherPopal was on the run. Multiple times, she changed her phone number and her hotel, but threats found their way to her. One text message said, “We will not let your parents live. Come back for payback.”The next summer, she learned that her brother Idris had been shot and killed on the way to a university math class in Kabul, and was sure that the death was connected to her activism.She made her way to Denmark after the sportswear company Hummel, the Afghan team’s sponsor, helped her apply for asylum there. For a year, she lived in a refugee center surrounded by barbed wire fences. Gunfire from the adjacent military shooting range provided an unnerving soundtrack.Popal in a group hug with girls at the asylum center in Sandholm, Denmark, where she volunteers as a coach. Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York TimesEvery day, she woke up with her eyes swollen from crying. At night, she kept the lights on in her barracks because of a recurring dream that a man was at the foot of her bed, trying to kill her. She considered suicide.“I spent a lot of time looking at the birds and feeling jealous because they have wings to fly and I was just a useless body with no identity,” she recalled.With the help of a therapist and medication, her depression lifted. In exile, Popal eventually volunteered as the Afghan national team’s program director, organizing tournament appearances and hiring coaches. She also coordinated surreptitious exits to safe countries for gay players who feared persecution and forced marriages.But even women who remained with the team were not safe. In 2018, Popal saw federation officials sexually harassing players at a training camp in Jordan. Players told her that they had been sexually abused by those and other officials, including Keramuddin Keram, who was the federation’s president and a powerful politician. Popal reported what she had heard, but for eight months FIFA officials did nothing, according to Popal and Lindsey, the coach.Popal persuaded 10 players to come forward and obtained blueprints of the federation’s headquarters. That paperwork showed Keram had a secret bedroom attached to his office where, players told her, he beat and raped them.FIFA eventually barred Keram from the sport for life and the Afghan courts punished him and four others. The case was the first of its kind in the country, said Fawzia Amini, who was a senior judge on Afghanistan’s supreme court before fleeing Kabul in 2021.“Khalida is my hero,” Amini said when she and Popal were in Washington last year to accept the Lantos Human Rights Prize. Amini had been the judge assigned to the soccer federation’s sexual abuse cases.“Because of her, girls know how to go to the courts to fight for their rights,” she said of Popal.In Washington in 2022, Popal and Judge Fawzia Amini accepted the Lantos Human Rights Prize for championing human rights and women’s rights in Afghanistan and around. Popal travels extensively to accept awards, speak at conferences and meet with refugees.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesNews of the case reached other national team players, including those in Haiti, Argentina, Canada and Venezuela. They felt emboldened to speak up about sexual abuse committed by men in their sport, said Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, the general secretary of FIFPro, the union for professional soccer players that helped Popal with the abuse case.“Khalida started a big wave,” he said. “She’s changing the world.”She is also trying to protect others from what she endured.When she was a teenager, Popal said, she woke up after a routine surgery to find her limbs tied to the bed. A doctor was on top of her, fondling her.He stopped, she said, only when she vomited.“I want to be there for the girls,” she said, “because no one was there for me.”When Kabul fell two years ago, Popal worried about those girls. While faced with terrifying flashbacks from her own experiences fleeing the Taliban, she felt a duty to the generations of girls she had urged to test society’s limits.“Save me, sister,” the player Nilab Mohammadi begged her one night in a video call while holding a gun. “The minute the Taliban knocks on my door, I will shoot myself in the head.”Popal soothed her, promising help. She rushed to social media and television to warn players to erase evidence that they had played soccer. Burn your jerseys, she said. Delete your social media accounts.Popal on the phone at her parents’ home in Denmark while her mother, Shokria Popal, prepared dinner. Shokria Popal encouraged Khalida’s soccer ambitions and helped her recruit players in Afghanistan.Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York TimesHands trembling and heart racing, she called her wide network. A team of lawyers, politicians and human rights advocates joined her to evacuate the players. Some of those players were forced to leave family members behind, and Popal empathized. When she left Afghanistan, she never again saw her grandfather, whom she called the love of her life. He had told her she could become an independent woman and make a difference in the world instead of marrying at 13 or 14 and relying on a husband.Eventually, Popal helped more than 200 players and their family members make it safely out of Afghanistan, where girls and women have since lost the freedom to work, attend school and even to go outside without a man.“People fail to acknowledge what a strategically brilliant mind she is,” Lindsey said. “Without her, none of this happens.”‘Like a Mother Fighting for Her Kids’Popal’s work continues. On any given day, she may be on a train to Berlin or a long-haul flight to Australia, off to accept awards or speak at conferences or meet with refugees. She often wears dresses or skirts, with her long, wavy black hair flowing over her shoulders, to make up for the years she had to dress like a man.After one trip in the fall of 2021, Popal and her boyfriend, Russell Pakzad, visited her parents, who had received asylum in Denmark in 2016. The smell of lamb simmering on the stovetop wafted through the apartment as Khalida gave her mother, Shokria, the latest honor she had won, the FIFPro Hero Award.With a bittersweet smile, Shokria leafed through a pile of Khalida’s accomplishments: a magazine article from Afghanistan, with a portrait of Khalida clutching a trophy; a photo of Khalida and the national team in Pakistan. Her only daughter always gave her trouble, she said, starting when Khalida was a schoolgirl who refused to keep her opinions to herself.Popal holding her award from FIFPro.Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York Times“I just think you are so brave and fearless,” she told Khalida. “I don’t know where it comes from.”The next day, Khalida Popal’s phone had 252 unread messages, many from players on Afghanistan’s developmental team. Popal helped evacuate those players from Kabul by choreographing a journey to Pakistan that included the girls huddling inside an abandoned house while Taliban fighters roamed outside.Popal had relied on a connection at the Pakistan Football Federation to help the team cross the border and into a government-sponsored hotel. But now the Pakistani government wanted the players to move along.Popal sought help from Rabbi Moshe Margaretten of the Tzedek Association, a Brooklyn-based social justice group she worked with during the initial evacuation of players. “She really inspired me because she was like a mother fighting for her kids,” he said.Popal was on a train to Brussels from Paris when the rabbi got back to her.“Kim Kardashian paid for the girls’ flight!” Popal said, laughing loudly enough to startle other passengers.The players flew to London, and then settled in Doncaster, about 50 miles east of Manchester. It’s just one place Popal routinely visits newly transplanted Afghans.Though the players’ hotel was not open to the public, Popal strolled by the security guards in the summer of 2022 as if she were in charge. She had work to do: link the players to local soccer teams, set up job training and ensure that they had mental health services — the same help she had given the national team in Australia. That weekend, she took the players to the beach and to the European women’s soccer championship, pulling several coffee-fueled all-nighters to fit it in. No one gave her that kind of attention, she said, when she was a refugee.Popal, at center in the booth, enjoying a meal with members of Afghanistan’s developmental team in Doncaster, England in July 2022. She helped plan their escape from Afghanistan through Pakistan and then to England.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNarges Mayeli, one of the players, said Popal provided hope.“I have nothing in my life right now,” Mayeli said. “But the only thing that I know is that if I put Khalida as my role model, I’m going to be successful someday.”Gaining AlliesThe Women’s World Cup was ending in a day and Popal was eking out all the publicity she could get for the Afghan team before the world stopped watching.Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist, helped with that.Malala had flown to Melbourne from Sydney, where she and her husband, Asser Malik, had attended a World Cup game. After reading in The New York Times about Fati Yousufi and the Afghan team, she wanted to meet the players and help Popal in her efforts.On a tiny indoor field, with about a dozen television cameras present, Popal listened as Malala and Yousufi, the team captain, gave speeches. She took deep breaths and stared at the ground to fight back tears.Malala, who wore the Afghan team’s jersey to the World Cup final the next day, said FIFA needed to change its regulations to let the team compete because playing a sport is a basic human right.Malala Yousafzai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, received a jersey from Fatima Yousufi, captain of the Afghan team, last month in Melbourne.Kelly Defina/Getty Images“It is time for people to decide that they are not standing on the Taliban’s side,” she said.Yousufi was next. Since her story became public, she had been featured at human rights and women’s rights conferences, and last May gave the commencement speech for Chapman University’s law school near Anaheim, Calif. (Yousufi once did not use her surname publicly, but does so now that her family has safely left Afghanistan.)“We are asking them to open the door, open the door for our team, open the door for Afghanistan women,” Yousufi said, referring to FIFA, as Popal and Malala nodded. “We don’t want to lose this opportunity.”Popal never thought she would work alongside someone with Malala’s stature, or that players, like Yousufi, would become forceful leaders worldwide.“It’s so lonely and tiring to do this on your own, which was what I did for a long time, but now I see that the new generation gets it,” she said, choking up. “It’s not all on my shoulders anymore.”Safiullah Padshah More

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      Afghan Goalkeeper’s Escape From Kabul Was Supposed to Be the Hardest Part

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      About 16 months into her new life in Australia, Fati, who was the Afghanistan women’s soccer team’s goalkeeper, can still be overwhelmed by “all the things I’ve lost.” It’s time to jump-start life, she said.The New York Times Sports department is revisiting the subjects of some compelling articles from the last year or so. In August, we reported on a soccer player who fled her home in Afghanistan to begin a new life. Here is an update.When her new life in Australia becomes too overwhelming, Fati, the goalkeeper for the Afghanistan national women’s soccer team, heads to the beach in the nighttime.She walks along the shoreline of Port Phillip Bay, where the skyline of Melbourne glows in the distance. She shines a flashlight on the colorful fish darting around the shallow water. And listening to the gentle lapping waves, she takes a deep breath and exhales.There in the darkness and solitude, it’s Fati’s time to reflect. And to mourn.“I try hard to relax and be calm, but I always end up thinking about all the things that have happened to me and all the things I’ve lost,” she said. “I see that the water is endless, like my problems are endless.”Fati waiting for a car ride. Two jobs and a brutal daily schedule gave her despair. Some speaking offers and the chance her story would be turned into a dramatic film gave her hope.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times(The New York Times is not using the last names of Fati and her teammates at their request because they fear retribution from the Taliban.)About 16 months have gone by since Fati and her teammates on the national team risked their lives to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country. After The New York Times featured Fati in an article in late summer, she was offered paid speaking engagements, including one opportunity to speak at a law school graduation in California in 2023.There is also a chance that her story will be turned into a dramatic film after more than a half-dozen people showed interest in buying the TV and film rights.“Sometimes I feel like so strong and I want to keep sharing my story and motivating other people,” she said. “I’m making a difference, I hope.”But none of that can magically heal her body and mind after running for her life from the Taliban, and then having no choice but to leave her parents and youngest sister behind.The Taliban Takeover in AfghanistanA Year Under the Taliban: ​A single year of extremist rule has turned life upside down for Afghans, especially women. A photographer captured the jarring changes.Reversal of Women’s Rights: ​In a return to its hard-line stances from the 1990s, the Taliban have barred women from attending college, ending the final hopes for girls’ education in Afghanistan.A Team in Exile: ​The Taliban have barred girls and women from playing sports. The Afghan women’s national soccer team is still feeling the effect of the ban, even from the safety of Australia.Inside the Fall of Kabul: ​In the summer of 2021, the Taliban took the Afghan capital with a speed that shocked the world. Our reporter and photographer witnessed it.Fati and most of her teammates on the national soccer squad were forced to leave Afghanistan without both parents because large groups often couldn’t make it past the Taliban checkpoints and chaotic crowds on the way to the Kabul airport, and to freedom.Fati, 19, now lives in a suburb of Melbourne with her older brother, a younger brother and a younger sister, and she has become their stand-in parents. Their parents and 5-year-old sister, Kawsar, are back in Kabul, barely making ends meet amid the country’s economic collapse.From left, Fati’s brothers, Khaliqyar and Ali Reza, and her sister Zahra ate a meal with Fati the way they did in Kabul.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesSome of Fati’s teammates’ families have left Afghanistan for relative safety in neighboring countries like Iran or Pakistan while they await Australian visas. But Fati’s family has not had such luck. Her parents and Kawsar do not have passports, complicating a difficult situation.Their immigration case has stalled in the system, and the potential cost for Fati to secure their exit from Afghanistan through backdoor channels is too much for her to pay. She and her family are Hazara, an ethnic group that is often discriminated against and targeted by the Taliban, and the price for those families to leave the country is in the thousands and can be more than twice the cost for non-Hazara families, she said.“I try not to be negative, but if you want me to tell the truth, I am losing my hope that my family will get a visa,” she said.The thought of never seeing her family again, or waiting many years to see them, is unbearable, she said, because time already is going by so quickly. She is crushed that Kawsar is growing up without her.Through daily video calls, Fati has noticed that her little sister has changed so much since they last saw each other in the melee outside the Kabul airport. Kawsar’s hair is long now, and the English that Fati taught her is slipping away. No longer does Kawsar watch Disney animated films to learn English and improve her own prospects in life, the way Fati did. Kawsar also has stopped going to school because it is just too dangerous. The Taliban have barred girls and women from playing sports and also have barred girls from going to school past the sixth grade.“She’s not the same Kawsar as I knew,” Fati said, choking up.Fati does her best to help her family in Kabul by sending them money. And while once she was supporting just her parents and Kawsar there, now she is supporting nine people who live in her family’s house. In recent months, her aunt moved in with her five children.Already, there is not that much money to go around. Fati must pay the bills for her house in a suburb of Melbourne where she lives with her siblings, two teammates and one teammate’s father.Fati photographed the lights of Melbourne, Australia, after eating dinner.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesFati also wants to relocate into the city to save herself the hourlong commute to work and soccer training, but the housing in Melbourne is too expensive.Her bank account balance bottomed out, once again, several months ago after her older brother, Khaliqyar, bought a car. She began working two jobs to help pay that bill.Her first job was in the IT department at a financial services company that is a sponsor for the Afghan national team, now that the team plays for the Melbourne Victory professional soccer club in a state league in Australia. From that IT job, Fati would go straight to her second job, an overnight shift at a pizza restaurant, preparing food and washing dishes until 4 a.m.The schedule was so grueling that Fati often had headaches and could hardly keep her eyes open, and began to oversleep and miss days at her office job. So when Khaliqyar landed a steady job at a painting company, she quit the pizza place.Now, Fati is able to focus on her soccer training and leadership activities, which include being a spokeswoman for her national team, a squad that is frustrated because it hasn’t been able to play any international matches.The Afghanistan Football Federation deactivated the women’s national team program when the players left the country, a spokesman there said, and FIFA, the global governing body of the sport, has ignored the team’s request to be reinstated.“I’m trying not to cry about the team anymore, but it’s hard,” she said. “I just want to turn on my Afghani mode and work hard to be a good goalkeeper and keep dreaming about playing in the World Cup someday.”Fati says she wants to play soccer for her country again someday.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesIn August, the anniversaries of Fati leaving Kabul and arriving in Australia were among her toughest days in recent years.During that time, she found it too hard to focus on her English class and dropped out of the course, which she said made her even more distraught and depressed. Several weeks later, there was an attack on an education center in Kabul that killed many Hazara students, including one of her teammate Bahara’s relatives.Fati, Bahara and some of the other players went to the beach that night to find solace, and the women spent the night wiping their tears.“I look at the water and I know the water is so cold, and I’m afraid that my heart is also getting cold,” Fati said that night.These days, she is applying for scholarships to a local university so she and her sister Zahra can start classes next semester. It’s time to jump-start life, Fati said. When she was a teenager, she wanted to be an archaeologist, and Fati still wants to see the pyramids in Egypt and visit China’s Great Wall. She also wants to play soccer for her country again.“I’m so much afraid of time and I think about dying, so I know I have to use every opportunity,” she said. “What if all of my time goes by and I never see my family? What if I die without reaching my dreams?” More

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      As the World Focuses on Soccer, a Women’s Team in Exile Aches to Play

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      When the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team watches the men’s World Cup, every image on the TV screen feels bittersweet.Each country’s flag flying high and each roaring, roiling cheering section. Each national anthem echoing across a pristine pitch. The Afghan women’s team, still in the developmental stages after years of playing in a war-torn country, hopes to be good enough someday to take part in soccer’s most prestigious tournament.But this year’s men’s tournament, with all its pageantry and thrill, is just a stinging reminder of how distant that ambition remains after the players fled their country last year when the Taliban took over.The Taliban have barred girls and women from playing sports. And the women’s national soccer team is still feeling the effect of it even though its members have settled in Australia, 7,000 miles away and safe from the Taliban. Because the Afghanistan Football Federation doesn’t recognize the team as an official national team, neither does FIFA, the global governing body of soccer.Now the players who risked their lives to play soccer inside of Afghanistan, and then risked them again to flee for a shot at freedom, are no longer eligible for international competitions. They are calling on FIFA to reinstate the Afghan squad so the women can officially represent their country.Afghan players warmed up at an event where they received new team jerseys at their Australian club.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe jerseys were labeled “AWT” for Afghan Women’s Team and bore Afghanistan’s flag.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times“We had to leave our home and stop our dreams, but it always was our goal to play as a national team again,” said Fati, the team’s goalkeeper who lives in a suburb of Melbourne. (The New York Times is not using the players’ last names at their request because they fear retribution from the Taliban.)“Now it looks like us playing for the national team is not going to work anymore. My heart can’t stand this,” Fati said.She added, “FIFA has the money and the power to help us, but it’s not doing anything.”Khalida Popal, one of the founding players of the Afghan women’s national team and the person who orchestrated the team’s escape from Afghanistan, said, “FIFA will say they don’t want to get involved in politics, but this is a human rights issue and they know it. They’ve just chosen to discard us.”FIFA officials, including President Gianni Infantino and Sarai Bareman, the federation’s chief officer for women’s football, did not respond to repeated requests for comment about how the Afghan women’s team could return to the international game, as the players in Australia have been ready to play and travel for months.Firooz Mashoof, spokesman for the Afghanistan Football Federation, said there was nothing the Afghan federation could do to help because, as he explained, the women’s national team dissolved when the players and women’s soccer committee fled the country. Inside the country, the 50 or so women’s soccer teams — from youth to the club level — also have vanished, he said.The federation has yet to discuss the future of women’s soccer with the Taliban, Mashoof said, because “the situation of women’s human and social rights in Afghanistan is not good.” He said FIFA would have to step in to make something happen.Khalida Popal, founder of the Afghan women’s national team, said FIFA officials “have just chosen to discard us.”Charlotte de la Fuente for The New York TimesIn August, Popal worked with young players at a training session for the Afghan women’s development team in Doncaster, England. Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe Afghan players and some human rights activists, including Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, said that couldn’t happen soon enough. Worden noted that the men’s senior national team, which did not qualify for the World Cup, and other Afghan men’s nationals teams, including ones for boys under 14, continued to play internationally while the women’s side of the sport had been completely shut down. That glaring inequality of opportunity, she said, is a violation of the Olympic Charter and FIFA’s own rules regarding human rights and nondiscrimination.“Right now, the Afghan federation is absolutely in full, flagrant violation of FIFA’s human rights policy and should be thrown out of the football world until women and girls can resume playing football in their country — and for their country,” Worden said. “The Taliban is totally getting away with banning women and girls. Global governing bodies like FIFA have an obligation to thwart what is happening.”Worden said it was time for the International Olympic Committee to suspend the Afghanistan Olympic Committee. The I.O.C. did so in 1999 after the Taliban barred girls and women from sports the first time it came to power, as it is doing now.Friba Rezayee, who competed in the 2004 Athens Games as one of Afghanistan’s first two female Olympians, said in a telephone interview that the I.O.C. and FIFA are actively ignoring the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Afghanistan.“Just last week, the Taliban beat people, including women, inside a stadium where athletes should be playing their sport,” said Rezayee, a judo competitor who fled to Canada in 2011. She added that dozens of female athletes in Afghanistan have told her that the Taliban is hunting for women who play sports so they can punish them. She heard from one judoka who recounted being beaten by the Taliban with a rifle when they found her practicing at her dojo. The soldiers let that woman go so she could be an example to other women who dare to play a sport, Rezayee said.Fati, the team’s goalkeeper, shown playing in Australia in April, said “it was always our goal to play as a national team again.”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe national team at a match in Australia in April.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times“What more does the I.O.C. and FIFA have to see to stand up for female athletes?” she said. “These organizations have the capacity and the budget to ensure the safety of athletes and also ensure that women are free to play their sport.”I.O.C. action against the Afghanistan Olympic Committee could happen next week. Mark Adams, spokesman for the organization, said the I.O.C. was “very concerned about developments regarding the participation of women and girls in sport in Afghanistan” and that the executive board would review the issue at its meeting on Dec. 6.If the I.O.C. goes forward with that suspension, it will put needed pressure on each sport’s international federation to decide whether its Afghan athletes can participate in non-Olympic international competitions. But FIFA doesn’t have to wait. It already has the power — and the duty, Worden said — to suspend the Afghan Football Federation for its exclusion of girls and women, bypassing the Taliban so girls and women can compete.One international sports federation, the International Cycling Union, has taken the initiative to help the Afghan women without any prodding from the I.O.C. The organization has been going out of its way to support Afghan cyclists and find ways for those women to compete, showing other federations — such as FIFA — that it is possible to do so without making it a political statement.David Lappartient, the president of the cycling union and a French politician, used his political and sports connections to help evacuate 125 people, including cyclists and other athletes, from Afghanistan. The federation has since sponsored a group of cyclists who now live and train in federation housing in Aigle, Switzerland, the cycling union’s home base. Last month, the federation also hosted the Afghanistan women’s cycling national championships, and more than four dozen Afghan women competed.Many of the members of the national team living in Australia share housing, shop and work together.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesGabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times“We must address a message of hope that sports is possible for women when it is quite difficult or impossible now in Afghanistan,” Lappartient said. “I just want to give this idea that the light is still on.”Without similar support from FIFA, the Afghan women’s soccer team is now looking for somewhere to play as an official national team. It’s considering joining the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, or Conifa, said Popal, the longtime Afghan women’s football program director. According to Conifa’s website, the organization “supports representatives of international football teams from nations, de facto nations, regions, minority people and sports isolated territories.”But the level and depth of competition at Conifa is not what the Afghans have been used to at the FIFA level, where 187 women’s teams compete. In comparison, Conifa’s website listed only three women’s programs in its rankings from July: FA Sapmi (from the Indigenous Sami people who inhabit part of Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia), Northern Cyprus and Tibet.For the Afghan women, the goal is to return to play under FIFA’s umbrella. To get there, Popal, who lives in Denmark, has sent multiple emails to FIFA officials asking them for help reinstating the Afghan team. For months and months now, she has yet to receive an answer.Last month, she also filed an official grievance with FIFA, writing, “All the coaches and players need to have their right to play respected and FIFA has the responsibility to guarantee our right to represent Afghanistan, even in exile.” At least a half dozen current and former players have also filed grievances, she said.Again, no response.“Men took away the players’ right to play football in Afghanistan, and now FIFA is taking away the right for the players to play football anywhere else,” Popal said. “I’m so frustrated that women have no voice. Why do the women of Afghanistan always have to pay the price?”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe players’ bond goes beyond being teammates as they share meals and have sleepovers at each other’s houses. Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesIn addition, the Afghan players have been hurt by the re-emergence of Keramuddin Keram, the former president of the Afghanistan Football Federation, Popal said. Keram, who was charged with sexually abusing players on the national team after Popal made the case public, had been hiding from authorities after his indictment. Now, with the Taliban in charge, he has returned to public life.“Our players have suffered so much in so many different ways, and it’s disgusting how they’ve been treated,” Popal said.Popal and the national team players said they didn’t want the I.O.C. or FIFA to bar the Afghan men’s team because the women’s team does not exist anymore. There should be a way for both the men’s and women’s teams to play, even while the Taliban is in control of the country, they said.If FIFA isn’t willing to help, Popal said she would like to establish a football association that includes all the players living in the Afghan diaspora and run that association from outside of Afghanistan. Other countries affected by war or countries that curtail the rights of women could follow her lead, she said.Already, Popal has ideas of running a training camp for the senior national team players in Australia, the under-17 players who ended up in England, the under-15 players who are now in Portugal — or any female Afghan soccer player. During that camp, there could be a tryout for the senior team that would theoretically play FIFA tournaments, she said.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe team won its second game as part of the Melbourne Victory club 10-0.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesFati, for one, would love that idea. Her dream as a young goalkeeper was to play in the World Cup. But right now, with the current restrictions on the national team and the practice the Afghan team needs to reach the sport’s highest level, the closest Fati will get is when the Women’s World Cup is held in Australia and New Zealand next year. Melbourne, Fati’s new home, will be a host city.While waiting to hear about its fate with FIFA, the Afghan team has been playing together at the professional club Melbourne Victory, with that club supporting the team’s travel, training and gear. The team competed in a state league and finished third in its division.But the players want so much more.“I am so mad at FIFA right now,” Fati said. “They are always saying that football is a family and that they take care of their football family. But that’s not the truth. They don’t care about us. They have forgotten us.”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesNajim Rahim More

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      How an Afghan Soccer Player Escaped the Taliban and Began a New Life

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      .interactive-content { max-width: none; width: 100% !important; } .g-topper { background-color: rgb(20, 20, 20); position: relative; width: 100%; } .g-topper .g-background { height: 100vh; position: sticky; top: 0; width: 100%; } .g-topper .g-background img, .g-topper .g-background video { height: 100%; -o-object-fit: cover; object-fit: cover; opacity: 0; position: absolute; top: 0; transform: translate3d(0, 0px, 0px); width: […] More

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      Who Is Afghanistan's Soccer Team Playing For?

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      BELEK, Turkey — Anoush Dastgir may be the hardest-working man in soccer, but by Saturday, his job had taken a toll.Dastgir, the coach of Afghanistan’s men’s national team, was sitting in an empty restaurant at the hotel where he and his team were preparing for an exhibition match against Indonesia. It was 11 p.m., and Dastgir was battling what sounded like a heavy cold. Which wasn’t surprising, given he now had a dozen jobs to do.Coaching a national soccer team is tough enough anywhere, but coaching Afghanistan has long had unique challenges.It is one of the world’s poorest countries and a place where civil war and Taliban rule once kept the national team from playing a game for almost two decades. The country is considered so unsafe, in fact, that FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, has long banned its teams from playing at home. Most of the time, that hardly mattered: Afghanistan is ranked 152nd in the world. And it has never qualified for a major tournament.Still, circumstances got even harder over the summer, when the Taliban swept back into Kabul, the Afghan government collapsed and its president, Ashraf Ghani — not to mention tens of thousands of his countrymen and women — fled the country.Afghanistan’s coach, Anoush Dastgir. He arranged his team’s friendly in Turkey on his own, and appealed to FIFA to help pay for it.Dastgir lost access to part of his team and half his staff in the chaos. Two staff members are now in refugee camps in Qatar. Two others are in Afghanistan, eager to leave. His roster is populated almost entirely by Afghan refugees, or the sons of refugees, who have found shelter in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, Sweden and beyond over the years, fleeing the various conflicts that have afflicted Afghanistan since the 1980s. But a few still spend time in Afghanistan, and this year even doing that became a concern.One of Dastgir’s most important players, Noor Husin, who left for Britain when he was six, was in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in July as the Taliban approached. “I was terrified to be honest,” he said. “Because every day there was news, they’re getting closer, they’re in the outskirts of the city. And I was thinking, surely not. You just didn’t think it was going to happen.”Husin managed to get to Kabul and scramble out of the country, but he — like many of his teammates — thought the national team was finished. “Everyone thought, this is the end, the end of everything,” he said.Dastgir, though, was determined to keep it alive, to have it continue to serve, he said, as a rare symbol of unity in a country often divided along ethnic or linguistic lines. So a few weeks ago, he picked up the phone and arranged a friendly match — the first since the Taliban took over — against Indonesia. That was the easy part. He then had to find a site for the game, arrange flights and visas for players and source coronavirus tests for everyone. With the Afghan soccer federation’s bank account frozen, Dastgir successfully petitioned FIFA for help financing the trip..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}With no kit man, Dastgir also had to ship 450 pounds of training gear himself, and then persuade his brother-in-law to help him wash it. He bought soccer balls, arranged referees and — without a communications team — promoted the game on his private social media accounts. He even negotiated a broadcasting contract to make sure the maximum number of people back in Afghanistan could watch the match. And then, with all that done, he still had to find time to coach the team.But as midnight neared in the hotel restaurant on Saturday, there was still one important issue to resolve: Which flag would the team fly?A Young LeaderAt 31, Dastgir is one of the youngest coaches in world soccer. Born in Kabul, he escaped the country’s civil war with his family shortly after Soviet forces left Afghanistan in 1989. He was just a few months old, and grew up in Pakistan and then India before settling in the Netherlands.In Europe, he learned Dutch and was scouted by a leading club, NEC Nijmegen. He was eventually called up for the Afghan national team but appeared in a handful of games before a knee injury ended his playing career.Afghan players at training in Belek, Turkey, and Faysal Sheyesteh, whose many tattoos include one of a helicopter and a fighter jet raining red hearts on Kabul’s skyline.“My coaches said, ‘You have to start coaching,’ because as a player I was kind of leader of the team,” he said. His first opportunity to lead Afghanistan came in 2016, when a foreign coach didn’t turn up for a game amid a contract dispute.“The players said, ‘I think Anoush can handle it,’” Dastgir recalled. He lost that game but the team had played well. The next time the post came open, in 2018, he was given the job..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}By then, he was on the hunt for Afghan players. Many were discovered among the vast Afghan diaspora, refugees and their children spread around the world. When a match against Palestine in Kabul was arranged in 2018, the first international game to be played in Afghanistan in years, Dastgir called in many of his discoveries.“I wanted to have these players in Afghanistan to feel the country, to see the people, because most of them are born outside the country,” he said. “So if you tell them play for your country, they are like, ‘What is that?’”Even now, the team’s place as a visible multicultural institution shows up in training sessions.Instructions were shouted out in Dutch and Pashto. Encouragement was offered in German, Dari and English. Sometimes, Dastgir switched languages midsentence. “My first captain is Tajik,” he said. “My second captain is Pashtun. My third captain is Hazara.” Two of his players, the brothers Adam and David Najem, were born in New Jersey.Between bus rides, hotel down time and fans’ cheering the players’ names, the week had the feel of any international match.Still, as the match neared, the questions of the flag and the anthem remained unresolved. This was not a decision to be taken lightly. The Taliban’s white flag, with the Shahada — the Muslim declaration of faith — printed on it, has replaced the green, red and black tricolor over Afghanistan’s presidential palace. And as the Taliban have instituted a broad ban on music, the national anthem has effectively been outlawed.Dastgir knew that playing it and flying the old flag would be controversial; the country’s men’s cricket team was rebuked by a Taliban leader after doing so at the Twenty20 World Cup. He knew his choice might cost him his job or worse.“I’m not afraid of getting fired,” Dastgir said. “I’m the head coach of the national team of 37 million Afghans. I’m not the national team coach of the Taliban regime, or the regime of Ghani. We never did it for the government. We did it for the people.”Cheers Far From HomeNo one in Afghanistan’s camp was sure if any supporters would actually come to watch them play in Belek, a coastal town near Antalya.Stadium officials worried about coronavirus restrictions were assuaged when Dastgir agreed to pay for security out of his own pocket. There was also the issue of whether the Turkish police might prove to be a deterrent. At least 300,000 Afghan refugees and migrants have found shelter in Turkey in recent years, and many are undocumented. But as the daylight faded and kickoff approached, hundreds of fans lined up outside the stadium gate.Afghanistan’s game against Indonesia had been arranged on short notice. A late goal delivered a 1-0 victory, and set off celebrations behind the goal and in the stands.“I want to show I am Afghan,” said Mursal, an 18-year-old student wrapped in a large Afghan flag but wary enough to decline to give her last name. She had fled to Turkey four years ago, after her father was killed in Afghanistan, and had found few opportunities to wave the Afghan flag since she arrived. “It’s our flag. You don’t have another flag. Just this flag, and no one can change it.”Six hundred supporters — the limit agreed upon with stadium officials — soon streamed in, filling the stadium’s one long grandstand.A few minutes before kickoff, the teams lined up at midfield. In front of them, two of Afghanistan’s substitutes unfurled a large green, red and black flag, the one Dastgir had carried with him to Belek. The anthem played, a moment beamed to millions of Afghans back home. No one was there to take the traditional prematch photo: The squad’s official photographer escaped to Portugal months ago.The game was frantic, soundtracked by the constant noise of the Afghan fans. Dastgir, dressed all in black, calmly gave tactical instructions. Late in the second half, he summoned Omid Popalzay, a Dutch-raised midfielder last seen playing in Poland’s fourth tier. In the 85th minute, a few moments after entering the game as a substitute, Popalzay scored. Minutes later, the final whistle blew. Afghanistan had won, and the fans erupted with joy.One fan jumped 12 feet down onto the running track surrounding the field hoping to get a selfie, but he was intercepted by the police and frog-marched back by his neck. One player, Norlla Amiri, climbed onto the shoulders of a teammate so his infant son could be passed down to him.Norlla Amiri climbed onto a teammate’s shoulders to collect his young son during the celebrations.Other fans threw their cellphones to the players, asking for selfies. Many wanted pictures with Faysal Shayesteh, a 30-year-old midfielder who has had a globe-trotting professional career since moving to the Netherlands as a boy.Nearly all Afghan fans knew Shayesteh because of his tattoos, including the one across his chest that shows Kabul’s skyline underneath a fighter jet and an attack helicopter, each bombarding the city with red hearts. Above his left breast were two GPS coordinates: The first is for Hengelo, the city in eastern Holland where he grew up. The other is Kabul, where he was born.“If I talk about it I get emotional,” he said, holding back tears. “Because I know what the people in Afghanistan are going through. And I know this is the only thing that makes them happy, winning a game for the national team. This is the only thing they have, so I’m very happy.”Dastgir watched it all unfold from the back, filming some of it on his phone to post on his Instagram account. No one had done more to make the moment happen than him. More

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      ‘Football Is Like Food’: Afghan Female Soccer Players Find a Home in Italy

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      Members of a team from Herat left behind the lives they had built in Afghanistan in hopes that they can build a future where they can play, and thrive.AVEZZANO, Italy — Two days after Taliban fighters seized Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city, the Italian journalist Stefano Liberti received a message via Facebook: “Hi sir, we are in trouble. Can you help us?”The message last month came from Susan, 21, the former captain of Bastan, a women’s soccer team that had once been the subject of a documentary by Mr. Liberti and his colleague Mario Poeta.“Football is like food to me,” Susan would say later, and the fear that she might never play again under Taliban rule, “made me feel as though I was dead.” Like others interviewed in this article, only her first name is used to protect her identity.Thirteen days after she made contact with Mr. Liberti, Susan arrived in Italy along with two of her teammates, their coach and several family members. They touched down at Rome’s main airport after a flight made possible by the two journalists, a Florence-based NGO, several Italian lawmakers and officials in the Italian Defense and Foreign Ministries.The Herat group, 16 people in all, transited through a tent camp run by the Italian Red Cross in Avezzano, in the Apennine Mountains, where more than 1,400 Afghans evacuated to Italy have quarantined in recent weeks.Susan lined up with other Afghan refugees for a clothes distribution at the Red Cross camp.Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York TimesLike so many Afghans, the players left behind the lives they had built in order to make the trip. Susan halted her university studies in English literature to leave the country with her parents, two sisters and a brother.Women were banned from sports during the first Taliban era. Even after the group was ousted from power in 2001, playing sports continued to be a challenge for Afghan women, and for the men who helped them.In “Herat Football Club” the journalists’ 2017 documentary about the team, Najibullah, the coach, said that he had been repeatedly threatened by the Taliban for coaching young women.The Taliban’s return to power has raised fears not only that restrictions on sports will be reimposed, but also that the female athletes who emerged in the past 20 years will be subject to reprisals.Khalida Popal, the former captain of the national women’s team who left Afghanistan in 2011 and now lives in Copenhagen, used social and mainstream media last month to advise women who’d played sports in Afghanistan to shut down their social media accounts, remove any online presence and even burn their uniforms.“They have nobody to go to, to seek protection, to ask for help if they are in danger,” she said in an interview with Reuters. Another Herat player, Fatema, 19, also left behind her university studies, in public administration and policy. She arrived in Italy with a brother, but her father fell ill while they tried to get through the crowds at the Kabul airport, so he and her mother remained behind.“They said to me, ‘You go, go for your future, for football, for your education,’” Fatema said.“Playing football makes me feel powerful and an example for other girls, to show that you can do anything you want to do,” Fatema said. She expressed hope that would be the case in Italy, too. “I want to make it my country now,” she said.Fatema at the tent camp in Avezzano last week. “Playing football makes me feel powerful and an example for other girls,” she said.Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York TimesThe oldest of the three players, Maryam, 23, had already earned a degree in management and had worked as a driving school instructor in Herat. She saw herself as a role model, inspiring young women by example “because of football, because of driving.”“I was an active member of society,” Maryam said, a role she was certain she could not have under the Taliban.Maryam was the only team member to arrive in Italy alone, though she said she was hoping that her family would join her. “It’s hard for me to smile,” she said. “But I hope my future will be good, certainly better than under the Taliban.”The players say that many of their Herat teammates are still in Kabul, hoping to find transit to Australia, where some players on Afghanistan’s women’s national team have been evacuated.Last Friday, the three women and their families were relocated to the Italian city of Florence. In Italy, the national soccer federation, some soccer clubs and the captain of the national team, Sara Gama, have offered their support to the young Afghan players.Administering a coronavirus swab test at the Avezzano camp this month.Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York Times“There’s been a lot of solidarity,” Mr. Liberti, the documentary maker, said.And on a warm afternoon last week, Fatema and Maryam did something they had never done before: They kicked a ball around with a couple of boys.Asked how it felt, Maryam grinned broadly and gave a thumbs up.“It felt good,” added Fatema. “People didn’t look at us as though we had done something wrong.” More