Zohib Islam Amiri, one of the first footballers to move from an Afghan club to a foreign club, was interviewed by The Guardian a few months ago.
Amiri was born in May 1987 and spent his childhood days during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In the interview, he evokes some memories from these times. "In the Taliban era, nothing was allowed. The only entertainment was football", he says, "but still, during half-times, they would cut off someone’s hand or shoot someone".
While observing that Having observed Afghan football´s transformation in recent years, these stories seem to be from another era. Such growth in a country’s football scene must be either due to a miracle or to extraordinary hard work.
Afghan football was disconnected from the global game for 18 years.
In September 1984, the Afghanistan national team had its last official match, an Asian Cup qualifier against Jordan. Since then, the country suffered from Soviet military involvement, a cruel civil war and a terrorist regime. The Afghan comeback began in 2002, as the team played in the Asian Games in South Korea. Three harsh defeats with 32 goals conceded and without scoring a goal, exemplified the characteristics of the quality of their football at the time. Their first official international victory came in March 2003, during in an Asian Cup qualifier against Kyrgyzstan, with a 2:1 win. But it was too early for celebrations. Two days later, the Afghans lost 4-0 against Nepal.
The turning point came in the double-header against Turkmenistan in the 2006 World Cup qualifiers. Afghanistan lost 11-0, and the second leg in Kabul concluded with another defeat. The Afghan Football Association decided to take some serious actions in order to improve the national team. They established the Kabul Premier League, a national league based on clubs from the capital city. The league ran for six years but did not lead to any short-term professional improvement.
Despite the horrific results, football’s popularity in Afghanistan was emerging and growing. In 2012, the Afghan FA made another change. A new league was established, still played in Kabul, but now there were new 8 franchises, each one of them based in a different region of the country. In order to find new young talent, the FA produced a reality TV show called "Maidan e Sabz" (The Green Field). At the end of the show, famous footballers and unknown future heroes formed the teams' squads. The fourth season ended recently and it seems that a tremendous change has taken place. Roshan, a local telecommunications company, is the sponsor of the league, the matches are broadcast on two radio stations and were shown in HD for two television channels and on YouTube. By official estimations, the last final attracted 13.5 million viewers.
Nonetheless, it's hard to have an extreme change in such a short time. Zohib Islam Amiri made history in 2011 when he left the Afghan league for Mumbai F.C., but it's hard to find many more talented players in the domestic league. Due to this fact, the FA started to search for players of Afghan origin in Europe. The Afghani national team now enjoy the services of European based players, like Ovays Azizi from Denmark, Roholla Iqbalzadeh from Norway, Norlla Amiri from Sweden and Mustafa Hadid from Germany. These players share a strong patriotic feeling for their country of origin.
It's hard to determine if a project like this would be a success, but in Afghanistan, it looks like a jackpot. They reached their highest ever FIFA ranking, 122, thanks to few great results. In 2014 they qualified for the AFC Challenge Cup and finished in 4th place. Now they are playing in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers and finally had their first-ever win in this competition, as they defeated Cambodia twice. When you consider that all these results were achieved without hosting any matches in Afghanistan, it's even more surprising.
The real prestigious event for the Afghanistan national team in the SAFF Championship, the biennial tournament for South Asian teams. For years, the tournament ended with the expected winners, India, who won 6 out of the first 9 tournaments. In 2011, Afghanistan improved slightly. They drew against India in the opening match and lost in the final 0:4, again to India. This achievement gave an optimistic view of the 2013 tournament. Nepal hosted the tournament and the matches were played in the same stadium where Afghanistan had their first-ever victory, a decade ago. After the group stage, they defeated Nepal in the semi-final 1:0 and gained another win in a perfect tournament, 2:0 over India. Both scorers, Mustafa Azadzoy and Sandjar Ahmadi are both Afghan-born, but their families moved to Germany.
In 2013, the Afghanistan FA won the FIFA Fair Play award. The FIFA committee decided to award them the prize for "dedication and hard work to developing football at the grassroots level" and " building the foundations for the game, nurturing a national league in the midst of violence and destruction." We can all see the results of that work with the success of the Afghan team and the emerging domestic league. Now they are ready for the next stage, as the SAFF Championship began last week.
Will the Afghans make another positive step in their journey?