Kat Khosrowyar had, by all accounts, an ordinary American childhood.
She did the things that most other kids did growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1990s. She went to a private school, she studied hard and she played community sport on the weekends.
Like a lot of girls in the USA, Khosrowyar quickly gravitated towards football — the top participation sport at grassroots level. She was five when she kicked her first round ball, and never stopped.
Her father was one of her earliest coaches, teaching her tricks and techniques and laying down the foundations of the game in her fledgling football mind.
She absorbed everything she could, taking his lessons with her into high school, where she went on to represent her region and, eventually, her state.
Khosrowyar dreamed of going through the country's famed college football program and, eventually, joining her idols representing the US women's national team.
"That was my ultimate goal," she told the ABC from her home in Texas.
"That was my trajectory. That was my plan. That is exactly what I was setting my goals to be.
"I had [college] scholarships lined up. I just had to pick and choose which school I wanted to go to. The future, for me, was definitely going to be football-related somehow."
But when she was 17, everything changed.
"During my senior year, I decided to go to Iran to visit family and visit the country for the first time," she said.
"Little did I know that my goal and my vision was going to [shift] towards a completely different country where I wasn't born, I wasn't raised in, I didn't speak the language. I just had family.
"Out of nowhere, my two-week vacation turned into 15 years."
The start of a different national team journey
Women's football didn't exist in any organised capacity when Khosrowyar arrived in Tehran in 2005.
What they did have, though, was futsal: the smaller-sided version of the outdoor game that was more accessible and popular in the tight spaces and streets of the city.
Naturally, Khosrowyar wanted to join in — as well as continue building her blossoming football career. She would take part in neighbourhood pick-up games to maintain her fitness and her touch.
Soon, a rumour began to spread throughout the city: an American-Iranian girl was showing up a lot of the locals, tackling and shooting and taking no prisoners.
"Eventually, a couple of people from the Federation heard about it and came over to the place where I was playing and training," she remembers.
"That's kind of where my life's direction changed. The people who came were the women's president of the Federation, as well as the to-be head coach of the first national team since the Revolution.
"And I did."
Having come from the USA, where football is one of the most accessible and highly-funded sports for women and girls, Khosrowyar was none the wiser as to the many barriers that existed for women wanting to play the game in Iran.
One of the biggest was dress code.
"I didn't know at the time that Iran was an Islamic country with Islamic values and Islamic laws," she said.
"The first day I went out to play and started warming up, I was wearing shorts and my hair was up in a ponytail. But I soon I had security guards chasing me [yelling], 'hijab! Hijab!'
"So within just a few minutes, I realised I had to wear some baggy pants and something wrapped around my hair. And that's how you start training."
Her team mates were flummoxed as to why she would stay in Iran when she had so many more opportunities available to her back home.
"They were like, 'what are you doing in Iran? You have to wear a hijab, it's different for you. We're used to it, but you're not used to it.'
"But the more they would say that, the more I'd sympathise with them. That's kind of why I wanted to stick around and play with them: the passion and heart they have for football, and the extra level of barriers [they faced]. I wanted to be part of that with them.
"Sometimes, people are like, 'you were crazy to even stay. You shouldn't have done it.' But deep down, from the bottom of my heart, I know I made the right decision because we were able to change the country for women's football.
"That's what I was more focused on. I didn't care about what was on my head or how many kilos [of extra clothes] I was wearing. I was just like, 'I need to get more women involved in the sport. It's going to change so much more than I can ever think of.'"
One step forward, two steps back
So she stayed.
Over the next decade, Khosrowyar and her team mates began to shift perceptions of women's football across Iran.
Participation numbers rose and their national team program evolved, including the addition of youth levels.
By the early 2010s, Iran's senior women's side were well on their way to what could have been their first appearance at an Olympic Games.
But that's where FIFA stepped in.
While the hijab had become a symbol of empowerment and opportunity for many women in Iran, football's international governing body — as well as football's law-makers, IFAB — saw things differently.
In mid-2011, FIFA banned Iran from a second-round qualifier against Jordan because the players were wearing the hijab, shattering their dreams of reaching the London Olympics the following year.
As the only nation in the world where the hijab is mandatory for women — meaning they cannot compete for Iran without it — the rule meant that the nation's best women footballers effectively disappeared from international sport.
Former Matilda Moya Dodd, who was chair of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Women's Committee at the time, recalls a round-table meeting in Jordan later that year to address the issue.
The meeting was convened by Jordan's Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, who'd just been appointed FIFA's vice-president, was on the AFC Executive Committee and had invited a group of experts and advocates — players, coaches, referees, administrators –— to attend.
Together, they unpicked the reasons FIFA had used to justify the ban, from medical concerns through to religious symbolism and even feminist perspectives on the hijab as a symbol of oppression.
By the end of the meeting, Dodd said, none of the reasons withstood criticism.
"I remember giving a presentation where I sort of walked through the statutes and the arguments that might sit around the issue," she told the ABC.
"In the first place, there was no evidence of injury on the medical front. If you're worried about people illegally grabbing things on the field and pulling them, then your concern couldn't stop at the hijab: it had to extend to other things like ponytails, on women and men.
"Regarding religion, clearly there are a lot of religious symbols on football fields, from players who cross themselves when they walk on the field or when they score a goal – including some of the world's leading players – to the tattoos that players have. Even to some of the symbols that actual countries use: the Saint George Cross, where does that come from?
"The feminist argument was raised by a French group in a letter sent directly to [former FIFA president] Sepp Blatter. But for me, if you were to look at the situation of the half-a-billion or so Muslim women in the world who are faced with the decision as to whether to cover themselves or not, I felt taking football away from them was not a move that would enhance their freedom or the feminist movement.
"So all the arguments against the hijab were, to my mind, adequately dealt with."
After that round table, it took a few more years of meetings, petitions, reports and resolutions before the ban was eventually lifted by FIFA in 2014 — as were the bans on turbans and kippahs for Sikh and Jewish men.
Two years later, the first hijabs were worn by women footballers in a FIFA-sanctioned tournament: the under-17 Women's World Cup that was held, poetically, in Jordan.
Small decisions, big impacts
The ripple effects of the overturned ban have already begun to significantly shape women's football around the world — and especially throughout Asia, where most Muslim women live and play the game.
In last week's opening round of the 2022 Women's Asian Cup, one of the most memorable images was that of the players from Iran, as well as other Muslim-populated nations like Indonesia, taking to the field while wearing the hijab.
"It's a wonderful symbol of how to be modern, inclusive, and respectful of culture," Dodd said.
"It's a story of football embracing its new world, which is diverse in gender and culture. For all that we say that football is a game for all, it's still got a little way to go. This is one way in which we can begin to rebalance the participation and the visibility of top athletes.
"We should be mindful that their path to these finals has been unlike that of any of the players in any other country. I just hope they're able to absorb and enjoy the tournament, which I'm sure they will remember for the rest of their lives."
Khosrowyar watched Iran's opening match — a 0-0 draw with host nation India — with deep pride.
After retiring from playing, she became the first Iranian woman to qualify for an A-level coaching license, taking over the country's youth national team programs.
Several players she developed over the past decade lined up on the lush grass at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, placing their hands on their national team crests as they sang their anthem, the white fabric of their hijabs glowing in the stadium lights.
"This has been a long-term struggle," she said.
"But I really feel like, in the last six years, I've seen great support from the country: from the government, from officials, the general public, from men and women, all ages.
"Initially, it was 'what the hell? Women's soccer? Why have we never heard of you?'
"It's a very passion-driven country — all because of football.
"To say that you're a footballer, you're a celebrity. People really respect men and women footballers: it's just taken a long time to get it embedded in everyone's head that women's football does exist, we are going to the Asian Cup, we are trying to get out of our first group, we need all the support we can get."
Iran's debut at the Asian Cup might not result in silverware, but the real success of this moment lies far beyond these two weeks: the start, perhaps, of the emergence of one of Asia's next powerhouses in the women's game.
"Iran women are football fanatics: give them a chance, watch them, you'll be impressed," Khosrowyar grins. She has since left coaching to complete her second Masters degree in global affairs, focusing on the role of football as a tool for women's development in the Middle East.
"And whatever the score is, know that we have had to jump 10 times the hurdles that most countries and most women have had to jump.
"When I first moved to Iran, there were only 20 proclaimed women footballers. Now we have 2 million. That's a huge number in 15 years.
"We're just at the tipping point of being able to have a huge breakthrough when it comes to women's development via football in our country. So in general, thank you to everybody for the support — and for not letting us down when we've needed them the most."
