Women Footballers Forced to Play in High Levels of Pollution

The following piece was written by an Iranian citizen journalist on the ground inside the country, who writes under a pseudonym to protect her identity.

 

A female footballer who plays for the team Pioneer of Nations in Sanandaj, the capital of Iranian Kurdistan, has described how she and her teammates were forced to play a rival team despite dangerously high levels of dust in the air. When someone posted a video online showing the appalling conditions, the team was threatened with a ban and told they should not speak to the media about the match and the conditions they endured. 

On the morning of Friday, January 19, Pioneer of Nations faced the women’s football team Esteghlal from Khuzestan in the province’s capital Ahvaz. Prior to the match, the weather bureau had predicted the levels of dust in the air in the city would be 66 times the level considered to be safe.

Despite such unhealthy air quality, Iran’s Football Federation did not cancel the game — even though they did cancel another match in the same city scheduled for the same day. Why did they cancel one game and not the other? The difference was that the second match was to take place between two men’s teams in Iran’s Upper League, Foolad of Khuzestan and Peykan of Tehran.

 

Making it Difficult for the Fans

In Iran, women’s Football League games must start between 9am to 10am. Why? Because the Security and Safety Council said so in the early 2000s and the Football Federation never challenged the order. It’s all part of the federation’s apparent overall plan to make it as difficult for spectators to attend women’s games as possible. Under FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation rules, Women’s League teams must be allowed to have formal matches, so the federation and authorities have no choice. But they can control what times the matches take place, and make it difficult for the teams to rally support. 

So, despite the dangerous levels of dust in the air, on the morning of January 19, the game supervisor informed the two teams that Leila Sufizadeh, Football Federation’s deputy for women’s football, had ordered that the match take place at the scheduled date and time.

 

“We Could not Breathe”

“The first half was not yet over and I felt my lungs were filled with dust,” the footballer told IranWire. “I wanted to ask the referee to stop the game. But then I noticed that the referee’s face was covered with dust as well. I have no doubt that not even the referee wanted the game to go on but had no choice. We really could not breathe.”

After the game, a very short video was posted online showing just how bad conditions were. The coaches for the two teams could not see the field, and players did a lot less running than usual, trying to kick the ball through the dust rather than run through it and continue dribbling. “The video that you see was taken during the first half,” said the footballer.

“We received a message telling us either to identify the person who had published the video or the whole team would be banned,” the female footballer I spoke to said. “We were told not to give interviews to anybody — not to the domestic media and not to media outside Iran. But we had not broken any laws. We had only said that at any moment somebody could have dropped dead right in the middle of the field.”

As she talked, she repeated a dozen times that she did not want her name to be used in my reports. 

 “At halftime, we all went to the supervisor and begged him to stop the game. ‘We have orders from Tehran that you must play,’ she said. ‘You are standing outside the field and you cannot breathe,’ said one of the players. ‘And you expect us to run?’ The reply was: ‘If you don’t like it you don’t have to take part in competitions again.’”

According to Tasnim News Agency, the game’s supervisor and the Football Federation’s representative were one and the same [Persian link]. “Yes,” said the footballer for the Pioneer team, “her name is Ms. Sadeghi. She is a Khuzestan native and she said: ‘We have no problem with this air. Get used to it!’”

Speaking to Fas News Agency, Gelareh Nazemi, a female official for the Women’s Football League, dismissed claims that the dust levels were dangerous. “It was not as bad as the girls are saying,” she said. “The men’s game [between Foolad and Peykan teams] was scheduled for 15:00 but the women’s game was to be held in the morning. There was no dust whatsoever when they were playing.”

An Optical Illusion

But Sadeghi and Nazemi are the same federation officials who have demanded that Pioneer of Nation’s coach and manager hand over the name of whoever posted the video online to the federation’s security department. “The published pictures and video show the closing moments of the game,” said Gelareh Nazemi. “From a distance it appears that it was dusty but there were no problems on the field.”

Coach Bayan Mahmoudi protested against the discrimination the women’s football team faced, especially since the men’s game was postponed. “The dust was so thick that the faces of my footballers were covered with dust,” she told Tasnim. “Their eyes were burning and they could not breathe. On the bus the girls were feeling bad and we were praying that something would not happen to them. Should we have gone blind or died to prove that the air condition in Ahvaz was beyond critical?”

But the federation deputy Leila Sufizadeh seemed to have no inclination to listen to such complaints. In recent months, Sufizadeh, who was appointed by the sports ministry’s security division to work under Mehdi Taj, President of Iran’s Football Federation, has shown that she believes her job is to control woman footballers, not to support them. “Arguing about women spectators in the stadiums is useless,” she said following the September 5th, 2017 FIFA qualification game between Iran and Syria at Tehran’s Azadi (“Freedom”) Stadium. Syrian women were allowed to enter the stadium to watch the game, while Iranian women were banned from entering.

Italians Yes, Iranians No

In November 2017, prior to a friendly futsal match between Italian and Iranian national women’s teams, Sufizadeh officially announced that Iranian spectators, reporters and photographers would not be allowed to attend the match — although Italian women were exempt from this ban. Only after an outcry in the media were Iranian women allowed in, provided they were not carrying phones or cameras.

And now Sufizadeh is looking for the woman who recorded the game in Ahvaz and posted the video online. “They told us not talk, otherwise we would be banned,” the Pioneer footballer told me. “They told us to tell them who had filmed the game. Why? Because we are women and even the lady officials at the federation do not want to stand up for our rights? Because we are not men and we are not allowed to shout? They only want us so that they can say they have met their obligation.” Iran’s football federation and sports officials have faced repeated criticism for discriminating against female athletes and fans. 

The game between Khuzestan’s Esteghlal and Kurdistan’s Pioneer of Nations could have ended in a human tragedy. And yet the Iranian Football Federation does not seem to care. Its priority is convincing FIFA that Iran allows its Women’s Football League to compete, and that matches go ahead. The health of the players — well, that’s another matter.

 

Sanaz Kalantari, citizen journalist