Soccer Attracting More Kyrgyz Women And Slowly Overcoming Traditional Attitudes

ALMATY — In Kyrgyzstan, probably the most acknowledged faces of native soccer is a lady.

Aidana Otorbaeva’s magnetic ball management and penchant for a cheeky trick drew curiosity from European golf equipment, in addition to from women throughout the Central Asian nation who would possibly in any other case by no means have given the game a second thought.

And her activism away from the game — significantly in the course of the coronavirus pandemic — has raised the profile of the ladies’s sport much more.

Otorbaeva’s feats as a volunteer in the course of the disaster have been acknowledged final 12 months when Fifpro, a worldwide group representing over 60,000 soccer gamers, acknowledged her as a “Fifpro hero.”

Donning a hazmat go well with together with her favored quantity seven and the diminutive Aidachka on the again, 27-year-old Otorbaeva was a part of a gaggle known as Collectively that distributed meals and medical materiel to help docs as COVID-19 overwhelmed Kyrgyzstan in the summertime of 2020.

“If you end up within the crimson zone and also you see docs mentally, bodily, and emotionally carried out in, you begin actually feeling the worry,” Otorbaeva advised RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service shortly after she obtained the award.

Otorbaeva earned a brand new award on September 2, this time from Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, for the “popularization of sports activities,” one thing that may be very a lot a part of her mandate as deputy chair of the nationwide ladies’s soccer affiliation.

However as she transitions from taking part in the sport to overseeing it, Otorbaeva argues that soccer might be greater than a sport for Kyrgyzstan, fostering social change and selling training in addition to on-field success.

Sports activities are a chance “to get it into ladies’s heads that they will do no matter they need,” Otorbaeva advised RFE/RL.

‘Study To Be The Housewife’

That message might be troublesome to convey, particularly when Kyrgyz politicians and different influencers are saying the alternative.

When opening a brand new faculty within the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, on September 28, Prime Minister Akylbek Japarov (no relation to the president), opined that “women should be taught to be the housewife, and boys should be taught to earn cash, defend their homeland.”

That assertion triggered consternation on-line however displays prevalent views concerning the respective roles of women and men in Kyrgyzstan.

The daughter of a soccer participant, Otorbaeva’s rise to fame started with kickabouts as a schoolgirl within the courtyards of residential buildings in Bishkek.

The journey she took enabled her to star for the nationwide staff and to determine a personal soccer academy, the place some younger women play alongside the boys, simply as she did when she was younger.

“Once I was rising up, folks advised me [soccer] wasn’t a sport for ladies, that I used to be losing my time. I needed to hear that quite a bit,” Otorbaeva recalled.

Today, it’s a little much less alien to see women on a soccer subject, together with exterior the capital.

Otorbaeva’s director on the ladies’s soccer affiliation, Anargul Abdysheva, says increasingly younger women are taking part in the game, aided by assist from FIFA, soccer’s world governing physique, which has helped fund interschool women’ soccer festivals throughout the nation.

The seven-team beginner ladies’s league can be stronger, though turnover on the groups is “an enormous drawback” as many gamers drop out in early maturity as a result of getting married or discovering work, Abdysheva advised RFE/RL.

A number of ladies from the nationwide staff are performing nicely in international leagues, reminiscent of these in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, she added.

The soccer tournaments have generally met resistance, whether or not from faculty administrations or mother and father.

However, within the area of Chui, simply exterior of Bishkek, a women’ staff shaped off the again of one of many tourneys, whereas they’ve additionally been greeted with enthusiasm in components of southern Kyrgyzstan, which tends to be considered as extra religiously conservative.

“Due to our mentality, introducing the idea of ladies’s soccer in a single day and in a focused manner may be very troublesome,” Abdysheva stated.

Soccer For A Stronger Group

At current, the affiliation’s focus is on subsequent 12 months’s Asian Cup, the place two youth-level ladies’s groups — however no senior ladies’s aspect — will characterize Kyrgyzstan.

If an expert ladies’s league and a nationwide staff difficult for main honors appear a faraway dream in a cash-strapped nation, the concept ladies’s soccer can turn out to be a group sport is already in play.

This 12 months and in 2019 ladies’s tournaments have been staged within the Leilek district of Batken, a southwestern province that final month witnessed unprecedented lethal clashes between the armed forces of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over their disputed border.

The organizer of the occasions, Gazibubu Babaiarova, a Prague-based activist of Kyrgyz descent, stated she was impressed by a small group of ladies who have been taking part in soccer on the native subject in her dwelling village of Kok-Tash.

“One lady stated she had misplaced 10 kilos and one other stated her blood strain had returned to regular [since they started playing soccer],” Babaiarova advised RFE/RL.

The debut match attended by ladies and kids solely gathered 10 groups of seven to 10 ladies every, who performed for a sheep as a primary prize and money prizes for second and third place.

With the pandemic vetoing summer season tournaments in 2020 and 2021, Babaiarova stated the ladies have been particularly longing for this 12 months’s competitors and started coaching with their groups within the spring.

It was to Otorbaeva that Babaiarova reached out to for assist arranging a educated referee to officiate the video games.

“This time round mothers-in-law, relations, and husbands appeared extra supportive. They have been holding the infants and taking good care of the kids of the ladies who have been taking part in. Most of the younger ladies have been breastfeeding kids between video games,” Babaiarova stated.

The initiative could but unfold to different villages in Batken — the provincial authorities has supplied to supply the setting — and Babaiarova is eager to make sure ladies from all backgrounds within the multiethnic province can participate.

But with the Kok-Tash ladies having match expertise behind them, Babaiarova believes they’d steamroll the competitors.

“They’re psychologically and bodily higher ready for the following match. They have already got their very own Ronaldos and Messis,” she joked, referring to the worldwide soccer superstars.

NOTE: Gazibubu Babaiarova is the spouse of Torokul Doorov, director of RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service