Fatima Haidari was sat at home in Italy when she received a video call from Fifa chief Gianni Infantino. On the screen alongside the captain of the Afghan women’s football team, spread across time zones and continents, were the faces of her teammates, women exiled from their home country for playing the sport they loved.

It was Infantino who made the surprise announcement, informing the players that Fifa would be formally recognising them as a national team in exile, eligible to play in international competitions. Almost five years after many fled Afghanistan following the armed takeover by the Taliban, Haidari tells The Independent that the news was met with an outpouring of emotion.

“When he told us, we were all crying from afar,” says Haidari, the 24-year-old skipper of the newly formed Afghan Women United. Fifa announced the move on the 29 April, saying it would amend its regulations to allow the formation of the new national team despite the objections of the Taliban regime in Kabul.

For Haidari, who as a teen trained in secret in conservative Herat even during the rule of the previous Nato-backed Afghan government, this was a moment of vindication more than a decade in the making. “It’s not just news,” she says. “We’ve made history.”

It was 2013, long before the Taliban swept back to power in Afghanistan, when as a 12-year-old Haidari asked her father for permission to play football. “I saw two or three girls and I saw the ball they were playing with their feet. It was the first time for me to see that, because in Afghanistan you are not used to it. It is not that you go out of your house and with guys, you just play. I mean, it is not normal,” Haidari recalls.

“Can I join you?” Haidari asked the girls. “Can I play with you?”

“Yeah,” they replied.

She didn’t know then that a football federation had been newly set up in Herat that allowed girls to play football.

Everything after that was like a dream. “I can never forget that moment when I told my dad. I asked him, ‘Can I go?’ And he took my hand and said, ‘Let’s go and see.’”

That moment, which in many parts of the world might seem so ordinary, was anything but in Afghanistan. Even under the Nato-backed government, football was not a “normal childhood wish for a girl” and training often happened out of sight. “We were hiding all the time,” Haidari says. “In a place where no men in the society could see us.”

Still, something was changing. Women’s leagues emerged. Tournaments were held. By 2014, teams like hers were competing nationally. “We had everything,” she says. “We were making history.”

Then, in what she describes as “two to three days”, her world collapsed. When the Taliban swept into Kabul in 2021 after driving out the Nato forces, the shift was immediate and absolute. “You feel like you have lost everything,” Haidari says.

What followed was a race against time. Players called contacts abroad. Journalists, former teammates, activists, searching for any way out. For Haidari who was in Herat, the message was stark: get to Kabul, now.

“We travelled more than 36 hours,” she says. “Without eating, without sleeping, just to get there.”

At the Kabul airport, chaos reigned. Hundreds of Afghans crammed onto planes, scrambling to escape the Taliban. The American military, in the final hours of leaving the country after 20 years, had closed the airport to commercial flights to evacuate their allies and members of the now-collapsed previous government.

Brutal scenes unfolded as thousands of desperate people crowded into the airport, beseeching the American, British and other European forces – which many of them had worked for over the previous two decades – to get them out. Some even held onto the sides of departing jets before falling to their deaths.

“Everybody has seen the photos,” Haidari says. “You just try to survive. You just try to find a way to just get out.”

Haidari escaped with the help of the Italian army, which had been stationed in Herat and was leaving along with the rest of the Nato contingent.

She is now a resident of Italy and plays in its football leagues. Her teammates are spread across Europe, Australia, and North America. Many of them were helped in their bids to flee Afghanistan by Fifa, alongside Western governments and organisations, in 2021.

While some have since received asylum, others have been left to navigate uncertain legal statuses. For a long time, their identity as a national team existed only in memory.

“For five years, we were told the Afghan women’s national team could never compete again because the men who took our country would not allow it,” former captain Khalida Popal, who played a pivotal role in coordinating with authorities from six countries to facilitate the evacuation of the players and their families, says.

The reason was structural as much as political: Fifa rules required recognition of the team from the Afghanistan Football Federation, an institution which, under the Taliban, wouldn’t support women’s football.

That changed last month after Fifa amended its rules to formally recognise the team, allowing the exiled footballers to represent their country.

While it’s now too late for the team to qualify for the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil, they can participate in qualification for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Fifa’s decision follows years of lobbying by players, activists and human rights groups and builds on a pilot programme launched in 2025 to organise training camps and friendly matches for the displaced players.

The 23-player squad earlier played in friendly tournaments with Chad, Tunisia, and Libya between October and November 2025.

Their new status enables the Afghan players to wear their country’s name again in official matches, which they have not done since 2018.

“This opportunity means everything to me,” Haidari says, meaning Fifa’s recognition. “It goes beyond football, it’s about giving a voice to Afghan women and showing the world that nothing can silence us. Representing my country again is the greatest honour.”

Inside Afghanistan, women are effectively banned from sport, and restricted from formal education, employment and public life.

Fifa’s strategy seeks to navigate this divide. Its programme includes three strands: limited support for women and girls still inside Afghanistan through humanitarian channels; diplomatic engagement aimed at easing restrictions; and direct support for players in exile with training camps, coaching and mental health services, the governing body tells The Independent.

Since players are scattered across the world, Fifa provides training and support to individual players. “As part of the support package Fifa provides, individual coaching plans are developed for players taking part in the selection process, in addition to training and playing opportunities at local clubs.”

The body “funds the overall delivery of team operations for Afghan Women United as part of the dedicated and wider Fifa Strategy for Afghan women’s football”.

“Fifa also provides a support package for all 90 players taking part in the selection process for the matches scheduled for June.”

Matches for Afghan Women United will be organised by its coaching team led by Pauline Hamill and Fifa. “Amongst other factors, player safety is a key area considered for matches and prospective host member associations,” Fifa says.

Haidari says that when they do come together for a game, dressing-room conversations with her teammates are at the same time ordinary and momentous.

“When you are in the dressing room, you just think about playing, and, you see your past, you see your future, you see the next generation, you see everything in that moment, and you see yourself, and it's a big moment,” she says.

The weight, she insists, is not history but responsibility. “I feel like I have the responsibility to be the voice of Afghan women.”

That sense of purpose is echoed across the squad. Goalkeeper Elaha Safdari describes the team as “a voice for Afghan women and girls who do not have access to basic human rights”, playing not only for themselves but for those left behind.

Although Haidari has seen her family abroad in recent years, she has not been able to return home. She may never. “I still have this fear. Anything can happen in moments,” she says.

“I want to go back to my homeland one day. I have 19 years of memories there, and my friends are still waiting for me. They're hoping that I can come back one day.”

She avoids framing her decision to be a footballer as political. “Sport has nothing to do with politics. It is just to have our freedom,” she says, “to show women exist.”

In the immediate term, the team is expected to play international friendlies and potential qualification matches for the 2028 Olympics.

For now, progress comes in fragments: a training camp in England, a tournament in Morocco, a first win against Libya after years away from international competition.

Fifa’s recognition has given Haidari and her teammates something they had lost for years: a flag to play under, a name that connects them to a nation.

“My ambition is to compete at the highest level of football and to represent Afghanistan with pride,” she says. “Outside of football, I want to build a career in business and continue supporting women’s rights.”

The meaning of it all comes back to something quieter than politics or policy. “It is about love,” she says. “Love and passion, and showing the world that we are still here.”