Afghan youth escape game4/30/2024 ![]() ![]() That’s when I met them, as one of a group of observers who’d flocked to Lisbon on that fall afternoon to watch the team play and hear their story. The Portuguese government had agreed to grant the players and their families asylum, and give them a chance to rebuild their lives there. But on September 19, more than a month after the ordeal began, the girls arrived in Lisbon. A few trying weeks followed, including some near-miss encounters with the Taliban, and a 20-day stay at a safehouse in Mazar-i-Sharif. ![]() They devised a plan, secured funding, and began orchestrating the girls’ escape. Farkhunda eventually got herself connected with some Americans who had been working on evacuation efforts for weeks. They reached out to the senior women’s national team captain, a young woman named Farkhunda Muhtaj who was living in Toronto. Knowing its players’ lives were at risk under Taliban laws that would not only preclude women from playing sports, but effectively erase them from public life entirely, the Afghanistan Football Federation put out a desperate plea across the globe for help. Their journey had begun over a month prior, on Augthe day the Taliban waltzed into Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul and quickly seized control of the country. How about that for a tribute to possibility? Now, here they were playing a game of soccer. Only a few days earlier, they’d arrived from their country after fleeing from the brutally oppressive Taliban regime. I felt it too when I watched my beloved USWNT’s hopes kept alive by the width of a goal post one game - only to be reminded how fleeting the feeling was when those hopes were destroyed by a millimeter in their next match.īut never have I been more powerfully convinced that anything is possible in sports than a day in the fall of 2021, when I watched the under-18 Afghanistan girls soccer team take the field for a scrimmage in Lisbon, Portugal. Then it came again when Colombia stunned Germany, knocking the world-ranked number two out of the tournament. First, there was the night when Nigeria beat host-nation Australia in the second match of group play. Watching the Women’s World Cup this summer, I got that feeling a few times. I think the thing I love most about sports is that under the right set of unpredictable and unlikely circumstances, they can give you that ineffable feeling that anything is possible. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |