Football saved my life, says Afghan team captain

The former captain of an Afghan national women's football team has said the game saved her life, after fleeing the country when the Taliban seized power.

Sabriah Nawroozi, 27, and her teammates from the Women's Development youth team left Afghanistan in 2021 along with many other citizens, after fearing for their safety as a women's sports team.

Now a coach at Harrogate Town AFC, Ms Nawroozi wants to share her passion for the game with other refugee women and girls in North Yorkshire, by setting up a free club.

She said: "If I wasn't a football player, I'd never have chance to get out. Football saved my life."

When Ms Nawroozi first decided to take up football, her father was supportive - but her mother needed a bit more convincing.

"She said 'if you play football, you won't marry anybody'. It was important to her that I got married to a good person," she said.

"I didn't listen because I really wanted to do it. But she's really supportive now.

"She knows I love football, and she knows how football has helped all of our lives."

When the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, Ms Nawroozi and her family did not leave the house for five days, while they worked out what to do next to stay safe.

She emailed a footballer who had left the country 10 years earlier, who then put her in touch with Leeds United FC.

The club offered to help secure visas and travel arrangements out of Afghanistan, via Pakistan.

The Afghan team and their families were due to fly out of Kabul, but security warnings stopped them reaching the airport, hours before it was struck by a bomb.

Eventually, they successfully made it to Pakistan but the arrival came with mixed emotions for Ms Nawroozi.

"All the way from the border to the hotel, I was crying. I feel I lost my heart, I feel I lost my mother, I feel I lost my everything," she said.

The final leg of the journey to the UK was still proving to be a challenge - and help came from an unexpected source.

US reality TV star Kim Kardashian came to the refugees' aid, covering the cost of chartering a plane to Stansted Airport, and paying for the squad's onward travel and accommodation.

However relieved and grateful she may have been, Ms Nawroozi admitted she had never heard of the celebrity before.

"I didn't know who Kim Kardashian [was] and I thought, 'maybe she's a really rich woman," she explained.

"I didn't know she's a celebrity. She's a really good woman."

Today, Ms Nawroozi is still involved in the sport she loves.

Now settled in North Yorkshire, she works with Harrogate Town AFC as a coach for community groups associated with the club.

Earlier this year, the club announced she was its Premier League Communities Captain for 2025.

Ms Nawroozi said it was hard to "build from zero" during her first year in the UK.

"The hardest thing was that we left our country forever [and] we need to accept that," she said.

"But now I love it; I love my job, my friends and colleagues."

Alongside her coaching, Ms Nawroozi is studying her GCSEs at Harrogate College, with the ambition of attending the University of York as a psychology student.

Her dream is to set up a football team for refugees in the county later this year, so they can enjoy the sport free of charge.

"I don't want them to just play football, I want them to learn to be a good player, to build a good future," she added.

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