Football: Women in Iran attend national team football match for the first time in 40 years

Thousands of Iranian women cheered, blew horns and celebrated inside the Azadi Stadium on Thursday as they watched the first FIFA-recognised football match which they have been allowed to freely attend in decades. The 2022 World Cup qualifier between Iran and Cambodia at Tehran's Azadi Stadium marked a decades-long push by Iranian women to be able to watch their country's football matches live. Even so, Iran allocated only 4,000 tickets for women in a stadium that seats about 80,000 people, and kept them separated from men and under the protection of female police officers. Iranian women have cheered on their national team abroad for years, despite the 1981 ban that followed the country's Islamic Revolution. Clearly, their presence was a good luck charm for Iran, as they thrashed Cambodia 14-0.