They had to sit well apart from the men and the stadium was practically empty, but thousands of Iranian women in merry jester hats and face paint blew horns and cheered on Thursday at the first FIFA soccer match they were allowed to freely attend in decades.
In what many considered a victory in a decades-long fight by women in Iran to attend sporting events, they wrapped themselves in the country’s vibrant red, green and white colors and watched with excitement as Iran thrashed Cambodia 14-0 in their 2022 World Cup Asia Group C qualifier at Tehran’s Azadi, or Freedom, Stadium.
“We are so happy that finally we got the chance to go to the stadium. It’s an extraordinary feeling,” said Zahra Pashaei, a 29-year-old nurse who has only known games from television. “At least for me, 22 or 23 years of longing and regret lies behind this.”
Photo: AFP
As one woman shouted from a passing minibus before the match: “We are here, finally!”
So far, Iran’s leadership is not willing to go as far some women would like. Authorities announced they would allow women to attend only international soccer matches.
Women have been banned from many sporting events in Iran since 1981, during the early years of the country’s Islamic Revolution. Iran is the world’s last nation to bar women from soccer matches. Saudi Arabia recently began letting women see games.
Photo: AFP
Under pressure from FIFA, Iran let a carefully controlled number of women into the stadium, allocating them 4,000 tickets in a venue that seats about 80,000 people, and arranged for 150 female security personnel in black chadors to watch them. They sat at least 200m from the few thousand men at the match.
Iranian state television aired footage of women cheering and commentators acknowledged their presence.
“There can be no stopping or turning back now,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in a statement. “History teaches us that progress comes in stages, and this is just the beginning of a journey.”
Iran faced a potential ban from FIFA international matches if it did not allow women into the game. The pressure from FIFA and Iran’s soccer-loving public has grown since last month, when an Iranian woman detained for dressing as a man to sneak into a match set herself on fire and died upon learning that she could get six months in prison.
The self-immolation of 29-year-old Sahar Khodayari, who became known as the “Blue Girl” for her love of the Iran team, whose uniforms are blue, shocked Iranian officials and the public.
At the match on Thursday, an Islamic Republic News Agency reporter posted a video online of chador-wearing officers trying to grab a woman she said had a sign in Khodayari’s honor.
The crowd could be heard chanting: “Let her go!”
The reporter wrote on Twitter that the woman slipped away from officers and ran off.
Shiite clerics, citing Islamic law, say that men and women must be segregated at public events, and women should be kept out of men’s sporting events.
Infantino said that “FIFA now looks more than ever toward a future when all girls and women wishing to attend football matches in Iran will be free to do so, and in a safe environment.”
Taiwan face Australia at the National Stadium in Kaohsiung in their Group B match on Tuesday next week.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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