Nouhaila Benzina made history as the first soccer player to wear a hijab at the World Cup, pictured above at the warm-up for Morocco’s match against Germany.<\/p>\n
Nouhaila Benzina made history on Monday when she stepped onto the Women\u2019s\u00a0World Cup\u00a0pitch to warm up with her soccer team \u2014 while wearing a hijab.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Moroccan\u00a0squad ended up facing a pretty brutal defeat at the hands of the two-time World Cup champions\u00a0Germany, losing 6-0, when playing in Melbourne, Australia.<\/p>\n
But the team had a victory in another sense because their player Benzina is the first player to ever wear the Muslim head covering at such a senior level of football.<\/p>\n
Although she was benched for Morocco\u2019s Group H match against Germany, supporters are hoping her impact will still be felt around the world.<\/p>\n
The co-founder of the\u00a0Muslim Women in Sports Network,<\/a>\u00a0Assmaah Helal,\u00a0said<\/a>: \u201cGirls will look at Benzina (and think), \u2018That could be me.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAlso the policymakers, the decision-makers, the administrators will say, \u2018We need to do more in our country to create these accepting and open and inclusive spaces for women and girls to participate in the game.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Benzina plays professional club football for Morocco\u2019s Association Sports of Forces Armed Royal \u2014 a team which is the eight-time defending champion in Morocco\u2019s top women\u2019s league. She has played matches in a headscarf before but never at a World Cup.<\/p>\n She hasn\u2019t yet spoken to reporters, but has shared her excitement on social media about wearing the hijab during the World Cup.<\/p>\n Benzina shared a screenshot of a tweet which announced she would be the only hijab-wearing athlete out of the 736 participants of this year\u2019s tournament.<\/p>\n SOURCE YAHOO NEWS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nouhaila Benzina made history as the first soccer player to wear a hijab at the World Cup, pictured above at the warm-up for Morocco’s match against Germany. Nouhaila Benzina made history on Monday when she stepped onto the Women\u2019s\u00a0World Cup\u00a0pitch to warm up with her soccer team \u2014 while wearing a hijab. The\u00a0Moroccan\u00a0squad ended up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6731,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6729\/revisions\/6731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}