This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Behrooz Samadbeygi contributed to this report.
Iran has drawn international praise and criticism after allowing thousands of ticket-purchasing women to attend a men’s football match for the first time since the early years of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Western news agencies with reporters in Tehran said about 4,000 elated Iranian female fans watched their men’s national team thrash Cambodia 14-0 in a World Cup qualifier in the capital’s Azadi Stadium on Thursday. The women cheered, blew horns, waved flags and donned red, green and white national colors in an upper corner of the stadium that was fenced off to separate them from male fans in the rest of the mostly-empty 80,000 seat arena, in which only several thousand men showed up.