Banned from football at home, Afghan women's team reunite 8,000 miles away - BBC News

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# Banned from football at home, Afghan women's team reunite 8,000 miles away

![Five women in red football kit stand in a line. The one in the middle is holding her arms above her head and her hands form the shape of a heart. ](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/1920/cpsprodpb/cfe4/live/164aada0-8f29-11f1-b8ee-9b3c26ad07bb.jpg)Image source, Phil Walter/Getty Images

Image caption, 

The Afghan women's football team gathered for the first time since Fifa ruled they could represent their country in official matches

ByMahjooba Nowrouzi

BBC News Afghan Languages, Reporting fromAuckland, New Zealand

- Published

  6 August 2026

**The changing room is busy with footballers going through their pre-match routines. Some stretch and tighten their boots, others embrace.**

"Be strong as always because we are representing Afghan women," says midfielder Fatima Haidari to fellow members of Afghan Women United.

Applause erupts in the room where an Afghan flag hangs and a patriotic song is played. As the women sing along some struggle to hold back tears.

There's a final team huddle with words of encouragement from their coach before they head out to the pitch – a place that for years they had been told they did not belong.

The 23-player squad, selected from Afghan players now living abroad, has travelled to New Zealand for a training camp and to play two unofficial friendly games against the Cook Islands.

This is the first time they have been together since football governing body Fifa ruled in April that they could represent their country in official matches in the future.

![About 20 women huddle in a circle in a changing room with their arms around each other. Some wear red football shirts and some have white bibs over their kit with the word Fifa written in dark blue. There is a table in the middle of the circle with a few bottles and some fruit on it.](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/749/cpsprodpb/915b/live/c3ef4cf0-8bfe-11f1-a52a-dba993a97936.jpg)Image source, Afghan Women United

Image caption, 

The team hopes that in the future they will qualify for international competitions, such as the World Cup and the Olympics

Previously, they would have needed the approval of the Afghanistan Football Federation. This was not possible under the Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021, imposing wide-ranging restrictions on women and girls, including barring them from secondary school and university, most professions and organised sport.

The country's national women's team, formed in 2007, could no longer play and its members were among those evacuated and resettled in countries including Australia, the UK and Portugal.

Years of campaigning led to the creation of a refugee team, which became Afghan Women United. Thanks to Fifa's ruling, it can now try to qualify for international competitions such as the Olympics and World Cup.

Gathered in New Zealand, the squad is excited to be playing together - as asylum seekers living in various countries it has been hard for them to get the travel documents in order to train as a team over the past five years.

Sitting in the hotel in Auckland the day before the match, Manozh Noori, who has short hair, wears a T-shirt and knee-length shorts - a look that she says has often drawn criticism from relatives for looking too masculine.

As the 23-year-old speaks to BBC Global Women about her family, her voice begins to falter. She pauses, takes a deep breath and looks away for a moment before continuing. There are no tears, but the emotion is clear.

![Manozh Noori standing on the edge of a pitch looking at the camera. She has shortish dark hair that is tied back and wears a bright pink vest over her red football kit. In the background there are some kit bags, a few other players and a couple of women sitting in a shelter. The sky is cloudy.](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/3840/cpsprodpb/6764/live/6d81cd40-73c9-11f1-aaa1-3f07d3ad2c35.jpg)

Image caption, 

Manozh Noori buried her medals in her garden before she left Afghanistan

Noori now lives in Australia but she grew up playing football with boys in the streets of Kabul.

After seeing women's football on television, she secretly joined local clubs and gradually rose through the ranks in Afghanistan.

She knew her older brother would disapprove so she tried to reduce the risk of being recognised by wearing a face covering.

Over six years, she won league titles, national championships and individual awards.

Eventually her success became impossible to hide. In about 2018 her fellow players persuaded her to remove her face covering for a TV interview, which was shown on the news along with highlights of their match.

Then she had to face the reality that her brother might see it. "I was so scared," she recalls. "I kept thinking, 'He's going to see me. He's going to know.'"

In desperation, she tried to stop the family from watching the news by turning off the electricity, but word soon reached her brother and he was furious, she says.

"He was screaming," Noori says. "'You told us you were studying. You said you wanted to become a teacher or a doctor. What is this?'"

He threatened to cut his ties with the family if she didn't stop, she adds. "My mother was crying. She told me, 'He's the person who supports us financially. How are we going to survive?'"

![Manozh Noori wearing a face mask to hide her identity while playing a match in Afghanistan](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/720/cpsprodpb/d222/live/ad39c2f0-6fdf-11f1-b873-31f4412355c8.jpg)Image source, Manozh Noori

Image caption, 

Noori (in blue) used to wear a face mask to hide her identity when playing in Afghanistan

Noori did stop playing for a while, but eventually started again. She says her other brother, who lives in Germany, sent money to help finance her dream