Face of Afghan women’s soccer urges players to burn jerseys, disappear

She speaks by phone from Copenhagen in the voice of an older sister or a mother trying to protect the Afghan girls and women who found freedom and joy on soccer fields.

Khalida Popal, a founder and former captain of Afghanistan’s women’s national team, knows she is privileged to live with her mother and father in Denmark, a place of safety and freedom. Although threats of violence and messages of hate still reach her there, Popal will not be silent.

Yet silence is what she urges of the soccer-playing girls and young women now under Taliban rule. Burn the jerseys you wore with such pride, she begs them. Take down your photos. Destroy all evidence that you ever played. Disappear in every way possible.

“It is very painful,” Popal says of her message, “because for all these years, I have been fighting to empower women and girls, to earn the right to wear the jersey. I am now saying, ‘Take them off. Destroy them.’”

The Taliban has taken over, so there can be no mementos for these athletes. Only memories are safe now.“our enemies are outside the window,” Popal says.

From the start, Popal explains, Afghanistan’s women’s soccer team was intended as a platform for opposing the barbarism of the Taliban, whose influence was felt long after its leaders were driven from power in 2001.

Unlike Popal, 34, Afghanistan’s current soccer-playing girls have never lived under Taliban rule.

“They have used football as a way to personally experience freedom,” Popal says. “To build networks, build connections, build self-confidence. To breathe. To be happy.”