Khalida Popal and Hailai Arghandiwal of the Afghanistan Women's National Team

Planet Fútbol with Grant Wahl

Sports Illustrated

Sports, Sports News, News, Soccer

4.6 • 859 Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2018

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For years, Khalida Popal has been the face of the Afghanistan women's national team, which has been a success story bringing the sport of soccer to more women in her home country. Popal helped raise her team's profile and even got sponsorships from Soccer Without Borders and Hummel, which produced uniforms with headscarves for the team. But recently Popal did her own investigation and found evidence that Afghan soccer federation officials, including president Keramuddin Karim, had physically and sexually abused women's players (which he denies). FIFA has suspended Karim, and the Afghan government has started an investigation into the federation. Popal, who fled to live in Denmark a few years ago, shares her story, and she is followed by Hailai Arghandiwal, an Afghan-American member of the team who recently graduated from Santa Clara University and just signed with the Italian Serie A club Florentia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Grant Wall, and welcome to the Planet Football Podcast, where I go in-depth with the most intriguing people in the world of soccer.
0:08.5	In this episode, I'm joined by Kalita Popal and Helai Argandawal of the Afghanistan Women's National Team
0:15.6	to share their remarkable stories in soccer and describe their brave efforts in dealing
0:20.5	with harassment, inappropriate work demands, and physical and sexual abuse
0:25.6	from leaders in the Afghanistan Football Federation, whose president, who denies the charges,
0:30.7	is now under investigation and suspended by FIFA.
0:34.0	Just a quick reminder, it's a huge help if you subscribe to, rate and review the podcast.
0:39.0	It helps people find us.
0:40.0	Onward.
0:43.0	Our first guest today is Kalita Popal.
0:46.0	She's a former captain of the Afghanistan Women's National Team
0:50.0	who fled Afghanistan in 2016 and now lives in Denmark.
0:54.4	She has been the face of the Afghanistan women's team
0:57.6	and she recently broke an explosive story in The Guardian
1:01.1	in which she revealed that women on the Afghanistan team said they had been
1:05.4	sexually and physically abused by Afghan Federation officials including the
1:10.0	Federation President Karamudin Karim, he has now been suspended by FIFA and there's an
1:16.0	investigation taking place in Afghanistan ordered by the government.
1:21.1	Kalita, thank you for coming on the show.
1:24.0	Hello, thank you so much for inviting me for the show.
1:30.3	This is Kaleida Popal, the former captain of Avon's National Team.
1:35.0	Yeah.
	...

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