During Morocco’s match against South Korea on Sunday, Nouhaila Benzina made history by becoming the first player to wear a hijab while competing in a Women’s World Cup tournament. The hijab is a headscarf worn by Muslim women.
After prior worries about player safety, the international governing body of football known as FIFA decided to relax its prohibition on football players wearing the hijab over a decade ago.
Benzina, a Moroccan defender who is 25 years old and plays her club football in Morocco, took the field against South Korea in Adelaide to try to etch her name into the annals of football history.
Benzina posted on social media about wearing a hijab in the days leading up to the World Cup, but she has not addressed the topic with the media in Australia or New Zealand.
She recently said in an interview with Al Jazeera that it would be an honorable occasion.
She remarked, “There was a lot of work that was done over the course of many years, and thank God it had a positive result.”
We look forward to competing at a high level and bringing honor to Moroccans.
Even if the hijab has been decriminalized in basketball and a number of other sports over the last several years, it is still not permitted to be worn during official football matches in France.
The Moroccan women are competing in their first Women’s World Cup. Their coach is a Frenchman named Reynald Pedros, and they qualified for the tournament by finishing in second place in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in 2022.
In the first game of the competition, Germany defeated them with a score of 6-0, and Benzina was forced to watch from the bench.