A group of Lebanese women have shrugged off family disapproval and paltry resources to create their country’s first female league for futsal — the faster, five-a-side variety of soccer.
“My family was against me playing at the start. They’d say neither football nor futsal is a women’s sport, but I fought for it, and kept on training,” said Aya Chiry, 27.
Today, Chiry is the captain of a Lebanese women’s futsal team called the Stars Academy for Sports (SAS), who last week took part in the opening round of Lebanon’s first national women’s futsal league.
Photo: AFP
Chiry, who lives in Beirut, eventually managed to convince her parents “by studying extra-hard and by just keeping at it, showing them that this is what makes me happy.”
Without an official five-a-side league, there was little opportunity for either her talent or women’s futsal to be recognized.
“I’ve been playing for five years, and the sport has taken me to Spain, Italy and Jordan for games, but we didn’t have a league in Lebanon. I’m really proud we do now,” Chiry said.
Like Chiry, many girls on the team have faced a lifetime of discouragement, mostly from family members who felt the game was unsuitable for women.
However, today Chiry combines her love for the game with her Master of Business Administration studies in marketing and her job at a skincare company.
Among the team’s new recruits is Aya al-Khatib, a 20-year-old Palestinian from Jericho, who traveled to Lebanon to play in the opening season.
“Football and futsal have been part of my life since I was 11 years old,” said Khatib, who wears her hair short and dyed platinum blond.
For her, sport is about much more than exercise.
“Sport is the only thing that brings us together. People from many countries that have suffered problems in the past have overcome them through sport,” said Khatib, who is a midfielder on the team.
“The fact that you have to shake hands with your adversary at the start of every game means you are contributing to peace, and that is what our region needs,” she added.
For the Lebanese members of the team too, the game is a chance to forget the sectarian and political barriers that so deeply divide their country.
“Our players come from all over Lebanon and from all the sects, but here we just don’t care about that. We are one team,” said Rania Chehayeb, a 30-year-old from the mountain town of Aley, whose husband “is very supportive” of her love of the game.
Lebanon has a national women’s soccer team, and neighboring Jordan and the Palestinian territories both have women’s futsal leagues.
SAS coach Wael Gharzeddine brushes aside traditionalist naysayers.
“We’re in the 21st century. Things have changed now. Women do jobs that were long reserved for men, while men now do things only women used to do,” he says. “Society used to see football and futsal alike as a game for boys, because they’re tough, contact sports, but now these sports are growing fast [and] more and more girls are joining in.”
Team goalkeeper Nathalie Jilinguirian, who is of Armenian origin, was keen for more girls to join the squad.
“Eventually, we’ll grow up and end up having kids. We won’t be able to be so committed,” the 27-year-old said while practicing shot-stopping dives. “We want younger girls and boys to join the fun, and I’d be willing to train them myself.”
“We want a new generation to take our place,” she said, before going back to her drills.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier