For first time in decades, women attend soccer match
TEHRAN — Thousands of flagdraped Iranian women cheered, blew horns and celebrated inside a Tehran stadium Thursday as they watched the first FIFA soccer match they’ve been allowed to freely attend in decades.
The 2022 World Cup qualifier between the Iranian national team and Cambodia at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium marks a decadeslong push by Iranian women to be able to watch soccer matches, something hardliners in Iran’s Shiite theocracy to this day still oppose.
Iran allocated only 4,000 tickets for women in a stadium that seats about 80,000 people, keeping them separated from men and under the protection of female police officers. That’s even though facepainted Iranian women have cheered for their team abroad for years, despite the 1981 ban that followed the country’s Islamic Revolution.
“We are so happy that finally we got the chance to go to the stadium. It’s an extraordinary feeling,” said Zahra Pashaei, a 29yearold nurse who has only known soccer games from television. “At least for me, 22 or 23 years of longing and regret lies behind this.”
The majority of Azadi, or “Freedom,” Stadium was empty except for the raucous crowd of women who could be heard chanting and cheering amid the match. Iran in the second half was up 100 over Cambodia. Iranian state television, which long has been controlled by hardliners in the Islamic Republic, aired footage of women cheering and commentators even acknowledged their presence.
Though Iran for years has considered letting women into soccer matches, the decision to allow them in Thursday came as part of intense pressure from FIFA, the world body governing the sport. Iran faced a potential ban if it didn’t allow women into the match.
That pressure has grown
both with FIFA and Iran’s soccerloving public since September, when an Iranian woman detained for dressing as a man to sneak into a soccer stadium to watch a match died after setting herself on fire upon learning she learned she could spend six months in prison.
The selfimmolation death of 29yearold Sahar Khodayari, who became known as the “Blue Girl” for her love of the Iranian team Esteghlal, shocked Iranian officials and the public, becoming an immediate hashtag trend across social media in the Islamic Republic.
Iran is the world’s last nation to bar women from soccer matches. Saudi Arabia recently began allowing women into soccer matches in the kingdom.
Amir Vahdat and Mehdi Fattahi are Associated Press writers.