First Sudanese Women’s Football Tournament To Kick Off Soon
14 September, 2019
KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - Sudan’s first ever women’s football tournament is scheduled to kick off in mid-September with 20 teams contending, announced the Sudan Football Association (SFA).
The tournament will be played in two rounds: The first round combines four groups in four of the country’s towns, namely Khartoum, Wad Medani (Center), Alobayyid (Mid-West) and Kadugli (South-West). The second round will be organized in Khartoum, featuring the top two teams from each group.
The Sudan women’s football saw light in early 2002 when Sara Edward launched the first team named Tahadi (the challenge). At that time there was no FIFA obligation for national football associations to launch female teams. But the FIFA later on tied its aid to member countries to the launching of women football activity. The FIFA had specified the form and conditions for this activity.
The FIFA had set the condition that any member country’s football association board should include at least one woman. Accordingly, when the Sudanese footballers went to the polls to elect a new association executive in 2017, a number of females contended for the women’s seat, a seat won by football analyst Ms. Mervat Hussein. Ms. Mervat is now chairwoman of the SFA women football committee.
In a statement to Sudan News Agency (SUNA), Mirvat said the notion of launching women’s football was encouraged by the wide social response to the registering of women football teams. “Women’s football is a sport like any other sport practiced around the world and we did not bring something unusual,” she maintained.
She confirmed that they in the SFA will observe the norms of Sudan’s conservative society.
Mirvat said her committee’s first challenge was to implement the FIFA directives. “We had to lay down a clear-cut strategy for women’s football, the women’s tournament and girls school football activity,” she said.
“Work on these dossiers was demanding. We trained female trainer, referees and administrators.” she said
She said in addition the already existing three women’s teams, 17 more teams were registered around the country in each of Khartoum, Sinja, Kosti, Wad Medani, Alobayyid, Gedarif, Kadugli, Kasala and Deling.
Volunteers were called to work in the specializations of medicine, physiotherapy and first aid to help make the experiment a success.
The announcement of the kick-off of the women’s football tournament has prompted the Netherlands Ambassador Ms. Karin Boven to follow up the activity, promising assistance as she did with other sports. The Ambassador has given special concern to the women’s teams, considering the constitution of women’s football activity a provision of a wider space that did not exist before. H.E the Ambassador went further to invite Netherlands famed female footballer “Rocky” to visit Sudan in November to tour a number of institutions and deliver lectures on the game.
Sudanese women are no strangers to women’s football. Some of them had engaged in football coaching and refereeing for a long time. Of these, Ms. Muneera Ramadan was first football division referee during 1975-1980. Ms. Salma Almajdi is currently first football division coach.
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