Sudan’s teen girls team returns to international soccer in Morocco

Sudan’s under-17 girls walked onto a pitch in Casablanca and reopened a door that war had slammed shut when civil conflict began in 2023. For a country where women’s soccer has been pushed to the margins by displacement and long-running social restrictions, the match was about presence as much as performance.

The squad was made up largely of teenagers, some of whom had fled the war and others who had never played in an organized league or even set foot in a major stadium before. They had started training only weeks earlier, a detail that underscored both their inexperience and the urgency behind the federation’s decision to send them out at all.

Sudan entered the African qualifying campaign for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games Women’s Football Tournament through a process that began with 35 national teams and only two Olympic spots for the continent. CAF held the draw on April 29, 2026, in Cairo, and Sudan was among the entrants. Federation officials turned to a younger squad largely to avoid forfeiting their place in qualifying after Sudan’s women’s football structure collapsed when the war started.

The gap was exposed immediately. Comoros beat Sudan 17-0 in Casablanca on June 4, with nine different players scoring, then won the second leg 13-0 on June 9 to take the tie 30-0 on aggregate and move on to face Nigeria. The scale of the defeat showed how far Sudan’s game has fallen behind better-prepared opponents, even as the players’ mere appearance on the field carried national meaning.

Burhan Tia, who oversees Sudan’s women’s national teams, has said the team is not yet at a level to compete at the highest tier. Manal Ali Bushra, who heads the women’s soccer committee, has said many players are separated from their families but continue pursuing the sport, while the federation looks to rebuild with projects that include a planned sports city and renovations to safer stadiums.

Sudan’s women’s football had briefly expanded after the 2019 revolution and the fall of Omar al-Bashir, including the launch of a women’s league with 21 teams in September 2019. The war that began in April 2023 reversed that opening, sending many players into exile and forcing others out of the domestic game altogether.

In that setting, the Casablanca appearance became more than a qualifier. It was a fragile claim on visibility, a reminder that even in a broken state, young Sudanese women still used football to assert continuity, defiance and the possibility of a future rebuilding.