The Maldives do not normally play host to historic football moments. Aside from the occasional regional triumph – historic locally but less so in a broader context, the idyllic and luxurious holiday destination is better known for its turquoise blue waters and overwater lagoons than for anything to do with football.
But at the Galolhu Football Stadium, a haven of green in the otherwise densely built capital of Male, history was made over the past week as the Saudi Arabian women’s national team took its first formative steps into the international arena with a series of friendlies against Seychelles and the Maldives, winning both games 2-0.
And amongst all the action was a 48-year-old from Albury-Wodonga, doing her bit to help develop a generation of female players who perhaps thought this day would never come. She has the sunburn to show for it.
“I was with my colleague at the airport yesterday,” Donna Newberry, the team’s video analyst, says just hours after arriving back in London. “And we were both kind of trying to process exactly what had happened in the last couple of months.
“I never thought I’d find myself in this kind of position to do a project like this. It’s almost like a reset in terms of why I work in football, why I believe in women’s sports and why I believe in women’s football as well.”
A chance meeting on the sidelines of a Uefa Women’s Champions League clash in Győr in northwest Hungary with respected veteran coach Monika Staab, who was announced as Saudi Arabia’s inaugural head coach five months later, set the wheels in motion.
“We got chatting and I said to her that I would be finishing up at Wolfsburg at the end of the season,” Newberry says. “And then she gave me her contact and said ‘look, at some point I might need a video analyst’.
“And then I saw about three months later she joined the Saudi women’s national team. I sent her a message to say congratulations and I thought to myself, ‘she’s really brave for going there’. This is the impression of Saudi Arabia [that I had] and I’m thinking, gosh that’s such a [brave move].
“[But] what she demonstrates actually is the pure love for women’s football, to get it to as many countries as possible.”
Brave as she thought Staab was in taking on the role, when the opportunity came to join her coaching staff, however, Newberry did not hesitate, much to the bemusement of her friends.
“Everyone was like ‘you’re insane, why would you go there of all places?’” Newberry says, admitting her time spent working in the country had challenged and changed her own perceptions.
“I just felt like I want to do it because I feel like maybe this is the chance they need. Let’s see what we can do. And yep, it was the completely opposite experience to what I assumed in my head.
“I appreciate that we were in a bubble, so I know it’s not the same as people who live there day to day, [but] it’s definitely changed my perceptions a lot.
“The girls were [even] saying, ‘we feel ashamed that we’ve only just been allowed to play football’ and I said, look at England, it was banned for 50 years.
“[Assistant coach] Sandra [Kalin] and I spent a lot of time together and had a lot of conversations about our thoughts and perceptions about Saudi Arabia, and I remember her saying that she actually felt ashamed of the way she had thought about the country.
“I didn’t really feel ashamed about it, about the thoughts I had before, but I just felt more educated.”
The establishment of the women’s national team, along with the domestic league, is significant in a country where, until just recently, women were banned from even participating in sport. It wasn’t until 2012 that Saudi Arabia allowed female athletes to compete at the Olympic Games. Those who challenged the system had to so in the shadows. There were no clubs or structures set up to develop female athletes.
Albandari Alhwsawi was one of the standouts for Saudi across both games, and was last year named as the domestic league’s best player and top scorer.
“You need to be brave to pursue your passion,” reads her Instagram profile, encapsulating the struggle so many of the team have gone through to reach this point.
Female players from the Arab world, particularly in ultra conservative countries such as Saudi Arabia, are often marginalised from family and friends for daring to dream. To pursue football in the face of that takes incredible bravery.
“I had seen a documentary, like nine or 10 years ago, about the secret Saudi women’s football league,” she says. “I saw it on the TV, and I recorded it and I’ve kept it on a DVD for that long. I always wondered from time to time, what happened to these women that were playing?
“That documentary for me was like … I wonder how many other [Arab] women go through this?”
The answer is a lot, and it’s not just from the Arab world, with the plight of the Afghan women’s national team in full focus in recent months since the Taliban returned to rule.
And for all the progress made in Saudi Arabia in recent years, with women finally granted permission to drive and enter stadiums to watch football matches, along with other, long-overdue freedoms, the reality isn’t always as rosy as the picture painted.
While prominent women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who had long campaigned for the right for women to drive and for the end to male guardianship, was last month released from jail after three years, others remain in incarceration while many more face ongoing persecution, or worse, for their vocal advocacy of women’s and human rights.
As the country tries to reinvent its public image, especially in the aftermath of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, there is an uneasy tension between the traditional conservative structures and the progressive reform they are seeking to implement as part of their Vision 2030 agenda; an agenda that is very much at the heart of this push into women’s football.
“I hope that women’s football will move forward in Saudi Arabia in general, and that women will be able to play football abroad, just like the men’s teams,” Seba Rabea Tawfiq, a player for Jeddah Eagles, recently told the FIFA website.
“If God wishes, we will make progress as female players and represent our home country like women elsewhere. Then, football will become ordinary for girls as it is for boys.”
While Newberry’s path to elite football hasn’t been anywhere near as difficult as those players she recently guided and mentored, it has been unique in its own way.
Initially traveling to London in the late 1990s with an eye on a career in graphic design, she worked a variety of roles across 14 years at Harrods, starting in the cashier’s office before moving into more senior positions in the marketing team, during which time she also learned to read and write Arabic.
“One of the areas I looked after was the restaurants, so I did all their menus and the signage,” she says. “I was head of a team and the one thing they did was foreign language, and nobody wanted to touch it.
“The owner, Mohamed Al-Fayed, wanted Arabic as well in the menus, so that came down to me. He knew that I had a Lebanese mother and he actually met her in the late 90s. She got to meet him and Sofia Loren who was opening the sale. He was like, ‘why does your daughter not know how to read and write Arabic?’”
Her big break in football came when she was appointed at Chelsea in 2014.
“José [Mourinho] wanted graphical people who understood football to do the illustrations of the scouting reports and do all the presentations,” she says. “So I came in halfway through the 2013-14 season and entered this job which changed my life.”
After five-and-a-half years with Chelsea, working across both the men’s and women’s teams, she left to join German giants VfL Wolfsburg, who have won four of the last five Frauen-Bundesliga titles, and most recently had a short spell with Arsenal in the Women’s Super League.
Fate, Newberry believes, intervened and led her to her most recent appointment with Saudi Arabia.
“When Monika got that job, I thought maybe this is just the opportunity,” she says. “Maybe now I can actually find out more about what I saw on this documentary.
“I told her [Staab] about this documentary and said maybe this is the sign. It’s meant to be.”
With her short-term contract with Saudi Arabia finished, Newberry hopes to one day return to work with the team as it sets its sights on the lofty goal of qualifying for the Women’s World Cup.
But as they continue on that journey, Newberry is preparing for the next chapter in her own career, joining up with NWSL expansion outfit Kansas City Current, a long way from the pitches of Jeddah and Riyadh … and even further away from the turquoise blue lagoons of the Maldives.
