AMMAN, 2 Nov: Sarah Asimrin still hears it from her uncles sometimes: \u201cYou\u2019re a girl, it\u2019s not right.\u201d But on a recent evening, the 13-year-old Jordanian was on her club\u2019s soccer field practicing alongside other girls and boys.
\n\u201cI fell in love with the game because it\u2019s got action. I love it a lot, more than any other sport,\u201d said Asimrin.
\nHer younger sister Aya plays soccer as well and, despite the reservations of a few uncles, their family supports them. In fact, their father is a soccer coach at a private academy in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
\nWomen\u2019s soccer has been long been neglected in the Middle East, a region that is mad for the men\u2019s game and hosts the World Cup for the first time this month in Qatar. The women\u2019s game has been held back by lack of financing and by conservative attitudes contending that girls aren\u2019t made for sports or that uniforms like shorts are too revealing.
\nBut some places show signs of momentum. The growth usually depends on active government promo-tion of women\u2019s sports. Where that happens, it taps into pent-up enthusiasm among girls and women and can shift public attitudes.
\nJordan has been one of the leaders, with one of the region\u2019s most successful national teams and a network of girls\u2019 youth and school leagues.
\nOthers are making new pushes. Last month, the first matches of a new women\u2019s Premier League were held in Saudi Arabia, where women have only been allowed to attend soccer games since 2017. The Saudi national women\u2019s team played against international teams for the first time this year.
\nNewly launched tournaments give women\u2019s teams opportunities for international competition and, proponents hope, will encourage the creation of more teams.
\nThe Asian and the much smaller West Asian football associations each held their first women\u2019s club championships in 2019. The African federation inaugurated its women\u2019s club championship last year in Cairo, and this year\u2019s games began this week in Morocco, with a $400,000 prize for the winners \u2014 though that\u2019s way below the $2.5 million that the winning men\u2019s club gets.
\nThe new venues fuel the dreams of young women hoping to reach professional levels.
\nMasar Athamneh, a 20-year-old on the women\u2019s team at Amman\u2019s Orthodox Club, said she\u2019s been playing soccer since she was 12 or 13. She used to join her brother with the boys on the pitches in her neighborhood and watched European leagues on TV. Portugal\u2019s Cristiano Ronaldo has been her idol \u201cbecause he worked hard on himself.\u201d
\nShe\u2019s hoping to one day play on Jordan\u2019s national team in international matches.
\n\u201cSometimes we face some difficulties, of course. \u2026 Like, \u2018This is a game only for boys or males\u2019, \u2018why do you wear shorts?\u2019 \u2026 and so on. This is a huge problem we face,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I think with the time, it\u2019s getting better and better.\u201d
\nJordan\u2019s Football Asso-ciation provides financial support for clubs to form women\u2019s teams, prompting even some conservative clubs to jump in, sports analyst Owni Fraij said.
\nStill, money remains the biggest problem. Clubs treat women\u2019s teams that don\u2019t generate income \u201cas a kind of luxury,\u201d he said.
\nQatar has lagged behind even other Gulf countries on the international level in women\u2019s soccer. But since the tiny nation was named host of this year\u2019s World Cup, it has been developing the game with women\u2019s teams at many of its universities and holding soccer academies for girls.
\nEgypt perhaps shows the region\u2019s starkest contrast. Its biggest men\u2019s teams are wealthy powerhouses that win regional tournaments regularly, while women\u2019s soccer languishes despite repeated efforts to end its neglect. A single team, Wadi Degla, wins most women\u2019s competitions.
\nEgyptian women have faced public backlashes as well. In 2020, a victory by the under-20 national women\u2019s team over Lebanon was met by a barrage of sexual harassment on social media, with obscene comments and sneers that girls shouldn\u2019t be playing soccer.
\nAdministrators\u2019 response was even more disturbing. They suspended upcoming games and fired the team\u2019s coaching staff, raising fears that the entire team would be disbanded. Players went on TV talk shows and spoke out on social media, and the squad survived.
\nOutside pressure may give Egyptian women a boost. The African Champions League will require clubs in its men\u2019s tournament to also have women\u2019s teams, which should force the hands of top Egyptian clubs.
\nWhere politics and powerful social opposition intersect, girls\u2019 enthusiasm for the game never finds an outlet. For example, while women\u2019s soccer is relatively active among Palestinians in the West Bank, it\u2019s virtually non-existent in the Gaza Strip.
\nGaza\u2019s 2.3 million residents are generally conservative. Its Islamist rulers, the militant Hamas group, grant little space for women\u2019s freedoms. The economy has also been crippled by a 15-year Israeli-Egyptian blockade, leaving little to spend on what are considered leisure activities.
\nOne of Gaza\u2019s few female sports teams is that of the Beit Hanoun Al-Ahli Youth Club, with 20 girls playing soccer and basketball. They wear pants instead of shorts, and long-sleeve shirts. Once they reach 17, they stop playing, often to get married, team manager Maha Shabat said.
\n\u201cThere is no support for women\u2019s sports in the Gaza Strip \u2026 no support to be like girls in other parts of the world,\u201d Shabat said.
\nRama Ashour, a 14-year-old player on the soccer team, said she hopes to be able to keep going and even play on a national team.
\n\u201cOn the internet, I see many girls (elsewhere) playing normally,\u201d she said. The largest obstacle in Gaza is society and tradition, but she said she wants to \u201cthink positively about the criticism. I will take it as a motive to proceed and challenge everyone.\u201d
\nBut others on the team are facing up to the limits. \u201cMy ambition \u2014 to be a player \u2014 is something impossible in this society,\u201d said 16-year-old Hala Qassem. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AMMAN, 2 Nov: Sarah Asimrin still hears it from her uncles sometimes: \u201cYou\u2019re a girl, it\u2019s not right.\u201d But on a recent evening, the 13-year-old Jordanian was on her club\u2019s soccer field practicing alongside other girls and boys. \u201cI fell in love with the game because it\u2019s got action. I love it a lot, more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-203967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}