A match in Kilimanjaro’s crater has been followed by one on the shores of the Dead Sea, as Haneen Khateeb and Yasmeen Shabsough seek to tear down barriers and get girls playing

It started as a joke. After a five-hour climb and 90 minutes of football in thin air, the players from Equal Playing Field sat back. At 5,714m above sea level, in the crater at the top of Kilimanjaro, they had secured the world record for the highest-altitude football match. Why? To highlight gender inequality. To show that women are strong, ambitious and deserving of equal opportunities. Elated after their epic journey, they jested about the next stage of their campaign. The highest altitude? Let’s do the lowest, they mused.

Except with two Jordanian women in their ranks, and their home country hosting the AFC Women’s Asian Cup, the joking turned to planning. Because the Dead Sea shore, at about 420m below sea level, is the lowest-altitude land on earth.

So one year on, in collaboration with Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan – the Fifa vice-president and former challenger to Sepp Blatter for the presidency – the Jordan Quest saw the Equal Playing Field teams hiking across the country. From rural communities and cities to awesome Petra, they ran football camps before playing for their second world record last week on a purpose built pitch in impoverished Ghor al-Safi.

For Haneen Khateeb and Yasmeen Shabsough, the two Jordanians who made the trip to Tanzania nine months ago, this endeavour has been about transforming attitudes and tearing down barriers that have blocked them as players.

“I started playing football from a very young age. I’m the only girl in the whole family,” says Shabsough. “I have only one brother and three male cousins. So every time we gathered we would go out and play football. That’s how I started.” While Khateeb began aged 11: “I started to play in the street, the only girl who played there, and they I got the chance to go into a grassroots centre at the age of 11.”

After that, their paths converged, with Khateeb joining an Amman club, where Shabsough was playing. They both worked their way through the national underage teams and now play for the senior side. Except their journey has been tough, but the hosting of the Under-17 Women’s World Cup in 2016, which saw over 14,000 attend the opening match and which the pair were involved in organising, felt like a turning point.

“When I started playing football it was so hard for girls to play,” says Shabsough. “We have had a lot of challenges but over years and years we have shown everyone that girls can play football. We’re proving to the world and to Jordan that we are really good and we deserve to be respected and supported.”

Ranked 51st in the world, Jordan are hoping they can qualify for the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France. “We worked really hard, we’ve trained really hard and we have a good chance,” Shabsough says. “If we qualify it will be the first time in history for Jordan to qualify for the World Cup. We will do our best but we really hope we can make it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Equal Playing Field squad at the highest altitude match, played at 5,714m in the crater at the top of Kilimanjaro in 2017. Photograph: Dana Roesiger

However their chances may have been dented by a surprise opening Asia Cup loss to the Philippines, ranked 21 places behind them, in front of just shy of 10,000 fans.

For Shabsough and Khateeb – and Equal Playing Field, which is essentially a collective of like-minded women players trying to improve things – the Jordan Quest is more than a publicity stunt or fly-by-night visit. They will be continuing to build on the hype created by the quest long after most of the EPF players fly out, and the pitch built for the record-breaker, the only pitch in southern Ghor, has given kids used to playing in the streets and on rocks somewhere to go.

Khateeb says: “We’ve been working so hard for the last three months for this. After Kili we had a meeting with Prince Ali and he got approval for the Jordan Quest, the EPF’s second challenge.

“At our first clinic we expected 4-500 girls and we got 600. The communities we’re going into aren’t in cities so it’s a much harder environment, people are even less used to seeing girls play sports or doing anything except maybe go to school.

“Most of the girls don’t want to move or do sport. It was just about them giving it a chance to see it and try it and they changed when they reached the field, they loved it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Girls play at the Wadi Rum football clinic in Jordan. Photograph: Dana Roesiger

Shabsough is excited about the prospect of what widening the horizons of the girls they are meeting can do: “After running these clinics the girls are going back home happy. They’re telling their mums and dads they had fun, they met players from all over the world and they want to carry on playing football. That’s how we can change communities, by changing the young girls, because they are the next generation.

“Football is not just a game, it’s a lifestyle, you use it in your life, you use it when you’re playing, you gain more friends, you gain more confidence in yourself. So it’s not only a game it’s building yourself and building your life.”

Oh, and the world record match between the players representing more than 20 countries finished with Black Irises beating White Tigers 4-2.

Talking points

• England crushingly missed out on qualification for this summer’s Under-19 European Championship with a 3-2 defeat by Germany in Bratislava. The young Lionesses’ fell behind after three minutes in their Uefa elite round Group 2 match. Hannah Cain equalised 10 minutes later but goals from Paulina Krumbiegel and Lena Oberdorf in the second half left England needing three goals with six minutes left. Lauren Hemp pulled one back but it wasn’t enough. Before the game England were undefeated in six matches.

• Carli Lloyd scored her 100th international goal in US Women’s 6-2 friendly win over Mexico. The 35-year-old’s impressive tally includes seven World Cup and eight Olympic goals. Meanwhile, the Netherlands and Arsenal forward Vivianne Miedema reached 50 international goals in the European champions’ 7-0 drubbing of Northern Ireland. The 21-year-old scored four times at Euro 2017.

• Demi Stokes and Fran Kirby have withdrawn from the England squad for Tuesday’s World Cup qualifier against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Zenica. The full-back Stokes has returned to Manchester City after feeling unwell following Friday’s draw with Wales while Kirby will be rested to look after a continuing injury problem. They will not be replaced in the squad.

• The FA has announced that the Women’s Premier League Cup final between Leicester City and Blackburn Rovers will held at Chesterfield’s Proact Stadium on Sunday 29 April. The WPL Cup is made up of teams which compete in the third and fourth tiers of the women’s pyramid.