After a lukewarm shower in the freezing winter of Kabul, Alireza Ahmadi combed his hair, tucked his white shirt into his black pants and stepped back onto the court.
Alireza, 17, is a phenomenon in Afghanistan, playing futsal, a faster indoor variant of soccer played with five on each side. Word had spread that he was participating in a local tournament on a recent afternoon, and fans, their smartphones raised, rushed to snap a selfie with him as he exited the locker room.
The teenager became a national hero last fall after scoring the winning goal against Afghanistan’s archrival, Iran, giving the country its first title at the Asian Youth Games, held in Bahrain. The victory spurred an outburst of collective joy that has become rare under Taliban rule and, for many Afghans, has upended how they perceive their own country.
“We’re trying from our end to show a different image of Afghanistan,” Alireza said. “There was war here. Now we want to host more games with foreign teams.”
Beating Iran in the final offered Afghans a moment of catharsis against a neighbor that expelled more than 1.5 million Afghans last year. When the team returned to Afghanistan, fans were so jubilant that they ignored the Taliban’s prohibitions on playing music publicly and posting videos online.
The victory also brought a complex reality into focus. Alireza and nearly all the other faces of Afghanistan’s success are Hazaras, a religious and ethnic minority long marginalized by the Taliban. Since they swept back to power in 2021, the Taliban have evicted some Hazara communities from their ancestral lands, excluded them from branches of the judiciary and higher levels of government, and diverted humanitarian aid bound for Hazara-majority provinces, according to human rights groups.
For a moment, Afghanistan’s heroes were from a group the state had repeatedly sidelined.
Wherever the team has traveled since its victory, Afghans have celebrated en masse — playing music, taking videos, defying the rules. “We brought people pride, and they responded with warmth,” Alireza said.
With his neatly trimmed hair and shy smile, the teenager has become a celebrity beyond the pitch. He has appeared in an advertisement for an Afghan soft drink. His match videos and messages dedicated to Afghanistan have drawn tens of thousands of views, even as the Taliban have banned the depiction of human beings on television and social media.
In November, thousands welcomed the team in Herat, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities and home to a large Hazara population. Fathers hoisted sons on their shoulders for a glimpse of the players. Fans threw firecrackers and played music, swamping officers from Afghanistan’s feared Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue.
When ministry officers tried to stop photography, hundreds of smartphones lit up the stands in defiance. As security forces lined up for the evening prayer, crowds rushed to the pitch and surrounded the players for selfies.
“I request officials from the ministry for promotion of virtue not to harass the youth today,” Shah Rasol Ehrari, Herat’s soccer federation head, told the crowds. “Today is a day of joy.”
Surprised by the youth team’s popularity, the Taliban have rewarded Alireza and his teammates with cars and motorcycles.
Though cricket remains Afghanistan’s most popular sport, the victory in Bahrain has accelerated the rise of futsal.
“Futsal is more popular than soccer in the cities because there are more indoor futsal courts than proper soccer pitches,” said Hamza Qasimi, one of the winners at the Asian Youth Games.
Afghanistan has 1,000 futsal courts across the country, 400 of them in Kabul, the capital, according to the Afghan soccer federation. Attendance has surged since the youth team’s victory, according to a half-dozen coaches and court managers.
On a recent morning, a crew of workers applied adhesive rubber strips on a new court in Chaprasak, a remote town in the central province of Daikundi.
“The national team is really good; it’s garnering a lot of interest,” said Khudadad Azizi, one of the court’s owners, as the scent of glue wafted over the surface.
In the rugged stretches of Daikundi or the outskirts of Kabul, the courts are often the most imposing structures around — steel frames and floodlights rising from empty lots. At night, the illuminated buildings look like spaceships.
In the most bitter winter months, the covered arenas become gathering places, with dozens of fans watching from stands overlooking the pristine courts. In Dasht-e-Barchi, a Hazara neighborhood of Kabul where Alireza grew up, the sport has become inescapable. “You can’t find a family without a kid playing futsal,” said Ghazanfar Arian, a tournament organizer in Kabul.
Alireza said he had dreamed of joining Afghanistan’s senior squad or professional clubs in Europe, but plans instead to honor his parents’ wishes and study medicine.
For now, his focus remains on the pitch. He is training for the Youth Olympic Games in Senegal this year, where the Afghan team is scheduled to compete.
“We had that strength in Bahrain, that we found each other easily on the pitch,” he said. “When Afghanistan is united, we can win.”
Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.
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