It started as a joke. After a five-hour climb and 90 minutes of football in thin air, the players from Equal Playing Field sat back. At 5,714m above sea level, in the crater at the top of Kilimanjaro,
Mark Ingram Authentic Jersey they had secured the world record for the highest-altitude football match. Why? To highlight gender inequality. To show that women are strong, ambitious and deserving of equal opportunities. Elated after their epic journey, they jested about the next stage of their campaign. The highest altitude? Let’s do the lowest, they mused.
Except with two Jordanian women in their ranks, and their home country hosting the AFC Women’s Asian Cup, the joking turned to planning. Because the Dead Sea shore, at about 420m below sea level, is the lowest-altitude land on earth.
So one year on, in collaboration with Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan – the Fifa vice-president and former challenger to Sepp Blatter for the presidency – the Jordan Quest saw the Equal Playing Field teams hiking across the country. From rural communities and cities to awesome Petra, they ran football camps before playing for their second world record last week on a purpose built pitch in impoverished Ghor al-Safi.
For Haneen Khateeb and Yasmeen Shabsough, the two Jordanians who made the trip to Tanzania nine months ago, this endeavour
Joaquin Benoit Authentic Jersey has been about transforming attitudes and tearing down barriers that have blocked them as players.
“I
http://www.titansauthenticsofficial.com/WOMENS_YOUTH_BRETT_KERN_JERSEY.html started playing football from a very young age. I’m the only girl in the whole family,” says Shabsough. “I have only one brother and three male cousins. So every time we gathered we would go out and play football. That’s how I started.” While Khateeb began aged 11: “I started to play in the street, the only girl who played there, and they I got the chance to go into a grassroots centre at the age of 11.”
After that, their paths converged, with Khateeb joining an Amman club, where Shabsough was playing. They both worked their way through the national underage teams and now play for the senior side. Except their journey has been tough, but the hosting of the Under-17 Women’s World Cup in 2016, which saw over 14,000 attend the opening match and which the pair were involved in organising, felt like a turning point.
“When I started playing football it was so hard for girls to play,” says Shabsough. “We have had a lot of challenges but over years and years we have shown everyone
http://www.officialbravestore.com/Ra_Dickey_Jersey that girls can play football. We’re proving to the world and
Walt Weiss Authentic Jersey to Jordan that we are really good and we deserve to be respected and supported.”
Ranked 51st in the world, Jordan are hoping they can qualify for the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France. “We worked really hard, we’ve trained really hard and we have a good chance,” Shabsough says. “If we qualify it will be the first time in history for Jordan to qualify for the World Cup. We will do our best but we really hope we can make it.”
However their chances may have been dented by a surprise opening Asia Cup loss to the Philippines, ranked 21 places behind them, in front of just shy of 10,000 fans.
For Shabsough and Khateeb – and Equal Playing Field, which is essentially a collective of like-minded women players trying to improve things – the Jordan Quest is more than a publicity stunt or fly-by-night visit. They will be continuing to build on the hype created by the quest long after most of the EPF players fly out, and the pitch built for the record-breaker, the only pitch in southern Ghor, has given kids used to playing in the streets and on rocks somewhere to go.
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