Noor Husin always believed that representing Afghanistan was his destiny. The Southend United midfielder was born in Mazar-i-Sharif 17 months before a massacre of 2,000 Hazaras there by the Taliban in August 1998prompted his family to flee the country. They eventually settled in Croydon, south London.
After spells at Reading and Crystal Palace, Husin made history by becoming the first Afghanistan-born player to appear in the Football League while at Notts County and received his international call-up in 2019. But despite establishing himself as one of the country’s most important stars and an important trailblazer for future generations, the 26-year-old is one of 18 players refusing to play for Afghanistan when they face Qatar in the opening match of the second round of World Cup qualifiers on Thursday in protest against their treatment by the country’s football federation and alleged corruption.
“I’ve been in the national team for four years now and this issue has always been here,” Husin says. “None of us come for the money – it’s a great honour to represent the national team and we all fly from different parts of the world. But we’ve seen the corruption inside the federation, how they take the money that they are supposed to be using to help football grow.”
A letter outlining the complaints, which include allegations of corruption by the president of the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF), Mohammad Yousef Kargar, was sent to Fifa and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) last week, urging them to investigate. Kargar has denied the allegations.
The former captain Faysal Shayesteh, who was born in Kabul but grew up in the Netherlands and has won more than 50 caps, says he repeatedly raised concerns with the AFF about conditions in the senior squad and the appointment as manager of the Kuwaiti Abdullah al-Mutairi, who was sacked last month.
“We complained about him to the federation and said we want to change three things: we said we wanted a better coach, to have better organisation with proper flight tickets and we want a little bit of support for the players because it has been four or five years since we have seen any money,” Shayesteh says. “We don’t want to destroy football in Afghanistan. We only want these people not to be in charge any more. After that we can continue developing football and we will always come back and play for the national team.”
In farcical scenes before Afghanistan’s World Cup qualifier against Mongolia last month, Mutairi was dismissed for refusing to sign the match sheet less than an hour before the scheduled kick-off.
“Before the first leg against Mongolia we already knew that he was not a good standard,” Shayesteh says. “We are not responsible for the coach so we just accepted it.”
According to the players, each squad member had been promised bonuses before the games against Mongolia. “They said to us: ‘These are really important games. We need you to win this because Saudi Arabia is going to host our games and we’re going to get money from them for the next round of qualification,’” says Husin. “They said that everything would be sorted financially with proper training camps. We won the game but they are not keeping their promises, like it has been over the last four or five years and beyond that. As players we’ve said to them that we can’t keep moving forward like this – we can’t not have proper preparation.”
The AFF said the players were given $20,000 in bonuses, with the remaining $10,000 used “to cover our national team’s expenses during training camp”. Several Afghanistan-based players have claimed they were never paid $1,000 for attending a training camp for several weeks in Kabul this year. “They didn’t even organise any proper accommodation for them – the players had to stay in the basement at the stadium,” says Farshad Noor, the captain, who came through PSV Eindhoven’s academy and plays for DPMM in Singapore.
“They slept there for a very long time. I asked about food and they said they bought one sheep and they fed them with this for the rest of the time they were there. This was the first time I’d heard something like this from the local players. One of them said: ‘Even if I was in prison I would get more food and have a better life than I do now playing football.’”
Noor adds: “Before when the foreign-based players complained to me that ‘We haven’t been paid anything for four or five years’, I was thinking they are going to fix it. But when I have six or seven domestic-based players who are also coming to me, that makes the whole team. I know 100% they’re with us – the problem is that they are scared for their lives because they are living there. They are very scared so they don’t want to say anything but if they could get out of the country they would speak out as well.”
The AFF said the players stayed in “the accommodation area of our football federation” during their camp but acknowledged it was not up to standard. “We have already proposed to Fifa that it needs urgent repairs and construction,” said the general secretary, Behram Siddiqui. “However, we do not have enough funds to carry out the repairs. So, we are doing our best to provide food for the players who come from other provinces. We understand that the players mentioned the word ‘prison’ but we hope that no one has to experience such a situation in Afghanistan. We try our best to provide the necessary facilities, but we are limited by the lack of resources.”
The AFF would like to appoint the former Bradford and Wrexham defender Ashley Westwood as Mutairi’s replacement but with so many players having made themselves unavailable, there are serious doubts about whether he will take the job. He is believed to have attempted to persuade some of them to reverse their decision, with domestic-based players called up to plug the gap. Noor says some of them are too afraid to speak out and could be forced to accept the call against their will.
“The players who live in Afghanistan don’t have a voice,” he says. “When someone tells them something, they’re not going to fight against it. The national team should be a place to be proud. I’ve been captain for four years so why should I suddenly stop? It’s about the younger players so that they have a better future. I hope one day they can say they are really proud to play for Afghanistan and not that it is full of corruption.”
For Husin, who once described winning his first cap for the country of his birth as “a dream”, there is no other option: “We’ve tried to have meetings with them and get this sorted out internally but they continue to ignore us,” he says. “We’ve got to a point where we’ve had enough and this is the only way out. I’m sure they will say that it’s all about money and we don’t care about the country but none of us chose to leave Afghanistan.
“All of us had to leave for a reason. They are always trying to use these tactics to separate the group but we believe it’s time to stand up for what is right.”
