Against a backdrop of devastating civil war, deep-rooted cultural conservatism, and overwhelming systemic challenges, Sudan’s under-17 women’s national soccer team made history last week in Casablanca, Morocco, marking the first appearance of any Sudanese women’s soccer side on the international stage since conflict ripped through the northeast African nation in 2023.
Walking onto the turf of Larbi Zaouli Stadium, the team’s bright red jerseys cut a striking figure against the lush green pitch. Most of the squad members are teenage schoolgirls; several fled their homes to escape ongoing fighting, and many had never competed in an organized league or stepped onto a professional stadium before this qualifying tournament for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
For 17-year-old captain Nura Mohamed, the opportunity to represent her country outweighed any pressure of competition. “My goal is to lift up soccer in my country,” Mohamed told the Associated Press in an on-site interview. “It’s a beautiful, unique feeling because, at the end of the day, I just love playing.”
The road to Casablanca was anything but smooth. When Sudan’s national soccer federation needed to field a squad to avoid forfeiting its spot in the Olympic qualifiers, it could not assemble a full senior women’s team amid the chaos of war. Instead, officials turned to this young, inexperienced group, which only began formal training just weeks before the qualifying matches. The outcome on the scoreboard was lopsided: the squad conceded 30 goals across two matches against Comoros, ending with an 18-0 defeat after a 17-0 opening loss. Many players wept after the final whistle, even as a small crowd of loyal fans cheered them off the pitch.
Veteran coach Burhan Tia, who oversees all of Sudan’s women’s national teams, acknowledged the massive gap between his side and more established competitors after the first match. “The difference between us and the others is huge. We cannot yet compete at the highest level,” Tia said. “Comoros has many players competing in Europe, our team is mainly made up of schoolgirls.”
Despite the heavy losses, federation leaders frame the team’s debut as a pivotal victory for women’s soccer in Sudan, which collapsed entirely when civil war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces in April 2023. For organizers, just getting the young squad to Casablanca represents a critical step in keeping the fragile women’s program alive through the conflict. “Some traveled long distances just to attend training. Many are separated from their families, yet they continue to work hard and pursue their dream,” said Manal Ali Bushra, a businesswoman who leads the federation’s women’s soccer committee. To build long-term stability for the program, Ali Bushra added, the federation is developing new infrastructure projects, including a planned dedicated sports city and stadium renovations in relatively safe regions of Sudan, though she declined to share details of the program’s budget.
Building the team from scratch required extraordinary effort from Tia, who stepped into the role knowing the magnitude of the challenge he faced. “First, I had to find girls who played soccer. Then, once I found girls who played, I had to make sure they were the right age,” he explained. “Then I needed to convince their parents to let them miss classes for training.” With the domestic women’s league suspended indefinitely due to the war, Tia conducted scouting trips across Sudan and into neighboring Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of Sudanese families have sought refuge from the fighting. He ultimately recruited 10 players from Cairo-based soccer academies and teams, with the remaining members coming from safer cities across Sudan. Tia had hoped to recruit young talent from conflict-battered regions like Darfur and Kordofan, an area long known for producing Sudan’s top athletes, but widespread displacement and the loss of official identification documents made it impossible to verify player ages for international eligibility. The war has also destroyed much of Sudan’s transportation network, turning once-short intercity trips into days-long journeys marked by constant danger.
On the pitch, the team’s lack of high-level competitive experience was clear: several players struggled with basic tactical positioning, struggled to maintain a consistent offside line, and repeatedly turned to the sideline for coaching guidance throughout both matches. But their presence alone carries enormous political and social weight in a country where women’s participation in public sports has faced decades of pushback.
The ongoing conflict, which the United Nations has labeled the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis, has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced more than 14 million since it broke out in 2023, with famine and infectious disease spreading rapidly across contested regions. Before the war, women’s soccer in Sudan only just began to emerge: the first official women’s league was established after the 2019 revolution that ousted long-time Islamist president Omar al-Bashir, whose three-decade rule enforced strict public order laws that severely restricted women’s public freedoms. Even after the revolution, conservative religious leaders have condemned women’s soccer: prominent preacher Abdulhay Yousif has claimed the creation of a women’s league is an effort to undermine traditional Islamic values.
Liv Tønnessen, a political scientist specializing in Sudanese gender politics, explained that for the Bashir regime, women competing in sports was framed as a source of fitna — a term understood in Sudan’s conservative context as moral or sexual chaos. “The idea of women running, jumping, sweating, and even something as simple as their bodies being visible in motion, was seen by Bashir’s Islamist regime as producing fitna,” Tønnessen, a former guest researcher at a women-only university in Sudan, told the AP. “So when women step onto a soccer pitch, they are directly confronting that entire logic. They are not just present in a male-dominated sports arena, they are moving freely in it, on their own terms.”
Off the pitch, players have also faced widespread harassment: on the team’s official social media accounts, dozens of commenters have mocked the squad for their lopsided defeats, with many posting misogynistic messages telling the players to “go back to the kitchen” in multiple languages.
The team’s participation in the qualifiers has also sparked political debate. While the military government led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has approved the team’s international trip, the United Nations has documented widespread sexual and gender-based violence committed by Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces. Tønnessen argues the military’s public support for the team is a calculated move to boost its international legitimacy, framing the state as functional and aligned with the progressive goals of the 2019 revolution.
But prominent Sudanese women’s rights activist Hala Al-Karib pushes back on claims that the team is being exploited for political gain. Instead, she argues the core issue remains long-standing underinvestment in women’s soccer across Sudan, calling for sweeping reform of the national soccer federation. For Al-Karib, the team’s right to compete matters more than political posturing.
Back on the Casablanca pitch, all the politics, conflict, and public debate faded into the background. For a few hours, there was only a group of young women, united by their love of the game, chasing a dream on the international stage.