Afghan women’s soccer team returns to the pitch in Australia

MELBOURNE, Australia—Afghanistan’s girls’s soccer crew has returned to the sphere after its evacuation from the Taliban-led nation final 12 months, helped by A-League crew the Melbourne Victory.

The Victory are offering their assist to the members of the crew who relocated to Melbourne following the autumn of the Afghan authorities in August, permitting the Taliban to take again management of the nation after 20 years and once more place girls’s sports activities in jeopardy.

The crew is seeking to compete in Victoria’s senior girls’s competitors this 12 months and held its first coaching session in Melbourne on Saturday.

“All the ladies are enthusiastic about enjoying collectively once more,” crew captain and goalkeeper Fatema, who makes use of just one identify, informed Australian Related Press.

“We wished to remain collectively as a crew to indicate that the Taliban can take away our nation, however not our proper to play the game we love and can ask for everybody’s assist in order that we are able to proceed our worldwide careers.”

The crew will play below Victory’s banner this 12 months, with full assist of the membership’s soccer operations.

Former Australia soccer captain and refugee advocate Craig Foster mentioned guaranteeing the gamers may proceed their careers after being compelled to depart their homeland despatched a robust message.

“Many nice folks and organizations performed a component of their brave escape however as they take the sphere once more, we’re reminded that their worldwide careers have been obliterated by the Taliban,” Foster mentioned. “Soccer can’t enable this to occur.”

The Afghan crew was created in 2007, performed its first official worldwide in 2010 towards Nepal and gained its first match 2-0 over Qatar in 2012. The rise of the Taliban and the following escape of the gamers additionally led to the crew withdrawing from qualifying matches for this month’s Girls’s Asian Cup in India, which doubles as a qualifier for subsequent 12 months’s Girls’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.