‘THERE WAS BLOOD EVERYWHERE’: THE ABUSE CASE AGAINST THE AFGHAN FA PRESIDENT

In a game-changing year for women’s football, Suzanne Wrack’s writing has covered every base: powerful exclusives that exposed wrongdoing, vivid interviews and great match reporting. After Wrack’s reporting of the alleged abuses suffered by vulnerable women in the Afghanistan football team, told in graphic detail by five brave victims at great personal risk to themselves and their families, on 8 June 2019 Fifa banned Keramuudin Karim, the president of the Afghanistan Football Federation for life. Days before that announcement, following a story broken by Wrack in December 2018, the Guardian revealed that senior FIFA officials, the AFC and the AFF - right up to the FIFA general secretary’s office - had all been made aware of allegations of corruption and abuses a year before they claimed. As well as promoting change in the Afghanistan football federation,the story prompted women in other countries to speak out against abuses, including Canada, Costa Rica and Pakistan, and led to the launch of the #FearlessFootball campaign by the AFDP (Association Football Development Programme) launched by Prince Ali of Jordan.