Matildas face North Korea in quarter-final
The Iranian women’s team was the story of this tournament. Here are some of their stories.
Golnoosh Khosravi grew up in the slums of Shahinshahr. Like an estimated one-quarter of Iran’s population, the future national team football player lived with open sewers, without sanitation and access to regular water and electricity.
He grew up in the dry heat of the country’s first planned satellite city, in the central Isfahan province. Perhaps equally true for him was that he grew up without shoes. So the little girl did what she had to do and spent the late 2000s running barefoot.
Sometimes he would collapse late into the night because his malnourished body could not keep up with the pace he felt he was made for.
Golnoosh Khosravi during Iran’s Asian Cup match against the Matildas on the Gold Coast.Credit: Getty Images
Speed coupled with technical skills earned him the affectionate nickname “Iranian Neymar” in homage to the Brazilian men’s football star.
“I didn’t have shoes to run outside. I didn’t have lunch. I was eating very small snacks, so I was really skinny,” Khosravi told the Asian Football Confederation website in 2020.
“But I would always run hard to reach my goal. My mother was sacrificing a lot. She was doing everything. She was doing low-level jobs just to make things possible.”
In his own words, Hüsrev “has been through a lot”. A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, “He had an extremely difficult life.” “There were a lot of dark clouds hanging over this kid.”
Khosravi had a particularly difficult time deciding whether to stay in Australia or return home, according to a source who spoke to him regularly during the tournament.
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