Interest in women’s football has skyrocketed over the last two decades. The two most recent World Cups, held in Canada in 2015 and France in 2019, as well as the UEFA European Championship of 2022, were huge successes and raised women’s soccer to new levels. Casa Árabe, as part of the “Football for Hope” exhibition,” will be highlighting the role played by football in promoting social change by organizing this meeting with three Arab women football players. Nouf Faleh Al Anzi, a player on the national team from the Emirates and a midfielder for the Club Deportivo Leganés; Yasmin Mrabet, of the Levante Las Planas Football Club and Morocco’s national women’s team, and Honey Thaljieh, former captain of the Palestinian national team and now the Director of Corporate Communications at FIFA. The event will be moderated by Lourdes García Campos, an RTVE show host.

Nouf Faleh Al Anzi is a midfielder on the senior women’s team of the Club Deportivo Leganés and a captain on the United Arab Emirates’ senior national team. At 25 years of age, she is one of the rising stars in Arab soccer. As well as playing an essential role in women’s soccer in her own country, Al Anzi is known for being the first Emirati woman to play the sport abroad professionally, having gone to Egypt in 2018 to play for the Wadi Degla team. Looking ahead to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Al Anzi appeared alongside players such as Karim Benzema in an Adidas campaign displayed at the Burj Khalifa to help launch “Al Rihla,” the official ball at this World Cup.

Yasmin Mrabet is a member of the Levante Las Planas Football Club and Morocco’s national women’s team. The midfielder started playing for the Spanish national team, rising through the ranks to represent Spain at the 2018 UEFA U-19 Women’s Championship. She later changed her affiliation to Morocco and made her debut for the senior national team in 2021. On July 13, 2022, she scored the winning goal in the 2022 Africa Cup of Nations quarter-final against Botswana, helping Morocco qualify for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023 for the first time in its history. In addition to C.D. Levante Las Planas, Mrabet has played for Madrid CFF and Rayo Vallecano.

Honey Thaljieh is a former captain of the Palestinian women’s national soccer team and is now the Director of Corporate Communications for FIFA. Born in Bethlehem, she was already kicking a ball at the age of 7. In addition to social and family constraints, she had to experience the desperation created by the two Palestinian intifadas against the Israeli occupation first hand. Given this situation, Thaljieh saw football as a way to vent her frustration, thus finding a way to build a future with some semblance of hope. After retiring in 2009, she became the first woman from the Middle East to earn a Master’s degree from the International Center for Sports Studies (CIES) in Switzerland in 2012.