Zest for women’s soccer grows in Middle East despite conservative opposition
ZAMAN – “The Zaman Stars” women’s team, which competes in the Premier League, will soon have a new member, the addition of a non-immigrant foreigner, a second striker, and a new manager.
The team, which was founded in 1995, has been plagued by conflict with the club’s main backer, the Al-Fayed family, which owns most of the city’s property.
For a period of time, it was one of only two teams in the country that did not pay its players.
And at different times, even if the other team, the rival Al-Batin, did pay its U17 squad, they refused to pay their own U14 team as well, and only paid them after months of debate, an issue still pending at the time of this writing.
Today, it is still not very clear who the U14 team is. The Stars are the only team from Syria and Lebanon for which there is any official team website. When they began the season, the team was still composed of mostly players from the Al-Batin Academy, a team they have not paid since 1997, when it took on a new coaching staff – the coach who has remained on staff and managed the team for several seasons was also the coach of the Al-Batin Academy.
The Stars’ new members are not immigrants, but have the same background as most youth women’s teams in the country. They come from different countries and are not affiliated with any club in Syria.
The new player, a “local,” a man named Mahmoud Youssef, has been a member of the local team for some time, and had previously played for an amateur Syrian team called the Tawerka.
He joined the Stars when he began to play for the local team while at high school in the United States. He had planned to attend school in the United States, but his father, a member of the Al