Salam alaykum! This is our weekly news recap. If you have a story or athlete you’d like to pitch for it, email us at TheAthleticUmmah@gmail.com.
The Headlines
Nurmagomedov touches down in Canada for Miftaah events: Legendary mixed martial artist Khabib Nurmagomedov has touched down in Canada for two events with the Miftaah Institute, an Islamic educational organization. Called “The Legacy Continues,” the first of these events was held in Vancouver on Thursday, Feb. 29. Nurmagomedov’s second and final event takes place in Toronto on Sunday, March 3.
Paul Pogba banned for four years from football for doping: Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba has been banned for four years from football after testing positive for a banned substance in August 2023. The France international was provisionally suspended by a tribunal of Italy’s national anti-doping organization (NADO Italia) in September after testing positive for DHEA, a banned substance which naturally raises levels of testosterone. A “sad, shocked and heartbroken” Pogba has denied any wrongdoing. He said he’ll appeal the decision before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, sport’s highest court.
Footballer Hamza Choudhury banned, fined for drink-driving: Leicester City’s Hamza Choudhury has been fined £20,000 after he pleaded guilty to careless driving and driving while double England’s legal alcohol limit. He was also given a 40-month driving ban and ordered to pay a £2,000 victim surcharge and £85 in prosecution costs. Choudhury was told his 40-month ban would be reduced by about nine months if he completes a drink-driving rehabilitation course.
What You Might’ve Missed
Unpopular opinion: I love the international break in football. While I enjoy seeing the best players in the world battle it out in the English Premier League or the UEFA Champions League every week, there’s a passion that exists in international football that’s not often seen at the club level. For me, club football is a sport, but international football is like going to war to defend one’s nation, culture and identity.
But as much as I love international football, I also know it has its flaws. The gulf in quality between each continent’s best and worst teams tends to be pretty significant; and because the worst national teams rarely play against sides above their level, they rarely have opportunities to grow, learn from better, more advanced programs, and open paths for their top talents to travel abroad.
This is an issue that FIFA has addressed in the past by expanding the size of tournaments like the World Cup to allow more countries to participate. But these expansions don’t do much for the worst teams in each continent, who rarely get close to qualifying for the World Cup, let alone making it to the final tournament.
This is the problem the newly-introduced FIFA Series seeks to address. Earlier this week, football’s global governing body released details of the 2024 FIFA Series, the pilot project of their new biennial invitational football competition.
According to FIFA’s official website, the FIFA Series are friendly matches that will be contested by nations from different continents, who don’t normally have the opportunity to play against each other.
“The ultimate objective of the FIFA Series is to allow more international football interaction, making a concrete contribution to global football development,” they said on their website.
The pilot project of this competition features 20 countries, pulled from across all six of the world’s populated continents. These teams were split into five groups of four nations, and each group will be played in a specific country, ranging from Azerbaijan and Algeria to Sri Lanka to Saudi Arabia.
Some of the biggest participating teams in the competition’s pilot project are two-time Africa Cup of Nations champions Algeria, seven-time World Cup participants Bulgaria, and 2010 World Cup hosts South Africa.
But the 2024 FIFA Series also features several smaller football nations without much history, like Sri Lanka, Bermuda, Bhutan, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.
The pilot project will be played in the March international window, between March 18 and 26. The competition’s full roll-out will be in March 2026, and Elkhan Mammadov, FIFA’s director of European member associations, says FIFA hopes more nations (including higher-ranked ones) join the FIFA Series in the future.
Although there is no trophy or prize money to be won in the FIFA Series, the governing body will cover the travel expenses of all participating teams, including their players and staff.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino says more meaningful matches will create “concrete contribution to the development of the game.”
“Our member associations have been telling us for a long time now of their desire to test themselves against their counterparts from all around the world, and now they can do so within the current Men’s International Match Calendar,” he said on FIFA’s website.
“The FIFA Series is a really positive step forward for national team football at [the] global level.”
It’s not often I agree with FIFA’s president on how the sport is run, but I have to applaud the governing body for launching this initiative. As someone who’s had to suffer through Lebanon and Canada’s early eliminations from qualifying tournaments for years, I know how annoying it can feel when one’s national team doesn’t play any meaningful matches, when they skip an international window due to a lack of games, when they cancel a game due to expenses and when the team’s football development stagnates as a result.
It’s a terrible loop to be stuck in for everyone involved, and while I’ve been fortunate enough to see my national teams hit new heights in recent cycles, I know that’s not the case with a large number of teams in the Global South and North America.
That’s why I’m pleased with the revamped structure of World Cup qualifiers in Africa, which allows teams like Somalia to play meaningful games against top-quality opponents. It’s also why I’m stoked to see the FIFA Series — which was initially announced in 2022 — finally come to fruition.
More meaningful games for smaller nations and national teams means more opportunities to experience new cultures, more chances for those teams to develop and, hopefully, more competitive games in qualifiers overall. With FIFA covering the costs, it’s a win-win for every team involved.
Muslimah Athletes of the Week
For fans of women’s football, the 2024 WAFF Women’s Championship provided us with a glimpse into how the sport is developing in the Middle East.
As we’ve previously covered, Saudi Arabia is making strides in the women’s game by hosting and participating in the regional tournament for the first time; and Palestine’s team made history — amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza — by winning back-to-back games for the first time in a decade, and going to the semi-finals.
But after all was said and done, it was Jordan that, once again, emerged as the queen of the competition again. Earlier this week, Jordan’s women’s national team captured their sixth WAFF Women’s Championship and their third in a row.
It started in the semi-final against Palestine, played on Tuesday, Feb. 27. After going a perfect 3-0-0 in the group stage, the Group A winners stormed past their Levantine neighbours by a 5-0 score in the semi-final. Captain Maysa Jbarah bagged a double — her second of the tournament — and goalkeeper Shireen Al Shalabi kept her third clean sheet in a row.
It was a dominant performance by Jordan, who have finished either champions or runners-ups in all but one WAFF Women’s Championship. With the finale set for Thursday, Feb. 29, Jordan looked poised to add another regional trophy to their cabinet.
But their opponents in the final, Nepal, gave them one of the toughest tests they’ve faced in this tournament. Despite being the consensus underdogs — they’re 31 spots behind 74th-ranked Jordan in the FIFA rankings — it was Nepal that took the lead in the 28th minute. The goal meant Jordan was behind in a match for the first time in the 2024 WAFF Women’s Championship.
But in the 78th minute, Jordanian relief finally came through Lana Feras. Moments after Nepal nearly doubled their lead, a Jordanian long ball was played forward, over Nepal’s defence and into their box. Nepal’s defenders slowed down because they thought there was no danger, but defender Lana Feras raced into the box. Acting as a makeshift attacker, the 25-year-old slid to meet the aerial ball on its descent and made enough contact to tap it past the advancing, bewildered Nepalese goalkeeper. Despite Nepal’s arguments, the offside flag stayed down, and Feras celebrated the equalizer harder than she had likely celebrated any other goal previously.
16 minutes later, Jordan seemed to have won the game. Once again, Jordan took advantage of an unorganized Nepalese backline by playing the ball to an unmarked player in Nepal’s box. Sarah Abu-Sabbah, who plays club football in Germany, was the receiving player this time around — but instead of hitting the ball first-time, the confident footballer decided to take a few touches to cut cross into the centre of Nepal’s box. Although this allowed some of Nepal’s defenders to recover, Abu-Sabbah used quick feet, some nifty skill and a little bit of luck to avoid their challenges, before slotting it home low to the goalkeeper’s right side. Abu-Sabbah immediately dropped to her knees in jubilation, as her 89th-minute goal appeared to seal the championship for Jordan.
Or so we thought. Nepal, for all their credit, pushed Jordan like we’ve seen no team do before. Just a minute after Abu-Sabbah’s goal, Nepal won a penalty thanks to a Jordanian handball. Gita Rana cooly stepped up and slotted it by the stranded Al Shalabi to tie the game in added time. For the first time since 2011, Jordan had failed to win a WAFF Championship game in 90 minutes.
It would’ve been easy for Jordan to feel disheartened after giving up an added time equalizer. But rather than sulk in their luck, the Jordanians made sure there was no room for error in the ensuing penalty shootout. Jordan didn’t miss a single one of their five penalties in the shootout — a really respectable feat, given it’s not often a team goes 100% in a shootout, especially not in the final of an international competition.
On the other end, goalkeeper Al Shalabi came up big in her own way. Although she conceded to the first three takers, Al Shalabi was doing a good job reading where each Nepalese taker was going to go. That came in handy on the fourth shot, where she dove low to her right side to spectacularly parry Amrita Jaisi’s penalty away.
Al Shalabi’s save set up Rouzbahan Fraij’s winning penalty, which she struck with power to the Nepalese goalkeeper’s left side. After the ball hit the netting, Fraij and her Jordanian teammates erupted into celebration — and a few minutes later, the keffiyeh-clad ladies were celebrating with the WAFF Women’s Championship trophy.
“Alhamdulillah, Allah (s.w.t) blessed me to score the equalizing goal … and alhamdulillah we were able to get the result,” Feras said in an Arabic interview with WAFF after the final.
Unsurprisingly, the plaudits came in for Jordan after the final. Although she missed out on top scorer honours, Jbarah was awarded the tournament’s Best Player award — a first for both Jbarah and Jordan. Al Shalabi also won the award for best goalkeeper, after conceding the fewest amount of goals in the tournament.
The championship extends Jordan’s lead at the top of the all-time WAFF Women’s Championship table, and it shows just how incredible they are at producing top-class Middle Eastern talents. For winning the 2024 WAFF Women’s Championship, Jordan’s female footballers are our Muslim Athletes of the Week.
Headline image credit: Jordan Women’s Football