Even the faintest praise for the Iranian Football Association as the clock has ticked towards Thursday’s World Cup qualifier with Cambodia, which will welcome around 3,500 women to Tehran’s Azadi Stadium after their 40-year exile, has been pretty galling.

Because, in reality, women are anything but welcome in the somewhat ironically named “freedom” stadium. The decision to creak open the gates is a reluctant one.

Iranian women allowed to watch football at stadium for first time in decades Read more

After tickets were released on 3 October for a single, women-only block in the 78,000-seat stadium they sold out within minutes. Women photographed and tweeted pictures of their prized purchases and, as a further three blocks were made available, each was filled in turn.

The Iranian FA has restricted the number of women able to attend. Around 3,500 are expected, comprising 4.5% of the capacity. Meanwhile BBC Persian Sport has reported that although only 2,500 tickets have been bought by men, the FA will not give more seats to women clamouring to enter.

As Amnesty International said this week, the restrictions placed on women attending and lack of commitment beyond this single event illustrate that this game is being used as a “cynical publicity stunt”.

The death of “Blue Girl” Sahar Khodayari a month ago was a horrific but significant step forward in the campaign to open the stadiums of Iran to women. Until that moment, Fifa and the Iranian FA were getting away with dragging their feet, the world governing body having looked the other way for decades as its rules on discrimination and human rights were broken.

Yes, Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, wrote letters to the Iranian FA, most recently in June, which the world governing body said included requests for a clear timeline and assurances that women wanting to attend the qualifiers would be able to do so and Fifa claims those letters were “answered positively”. But in March 2018 Infantino himself had been inside the stadium hosting the Tehran derby between Esteghlal and Persepolis while 35 women were arrested outside.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A banner displayed at Iran’s game against Morocco during the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images

In her death Khodayari, who set herself on fire outside the courthouse she was being summoned to to face charges in connection with attempting to enter the stadium while disguised as a man, exposed the snail’s pace of change and forced action to be expedited with international observers aghast and watching.

It is a campaign that represents more than the right to watch football: it challenges ingrained attitudes in Iranian society, challenges the exclusion of women from public spaces, exposes the viciousness with which the state and religious institutes and their representatives will clamp down on change and it acts as a beacon to other movements and campaigns emerging in the country. The government and FA are so resistant to making concessions because they do not want to embolden campaigners to fight for further changes or allow them to broaden the conversation.

It is also a movement that highlights the power of football. If Fifa were to convincingly threaten sanctions and demand immediate change instead of seemingly accepting a somewhat incremental and drawn-out process riddled with excuses (women’s toilets are too expensive, separate entrances have to be arranged, doing it one-off international fixture at a time, etc) then it could play a role in fundamentally altering conditions in a country known for its oppressive restrictions on women.

Some will undoubtedly say we should welcome and cheerlead even the smallest steps in the right direction. But with at least 40 women having been arrested in the past two years, according to Human Rights Watch, some of whom have been prosecuted and have criminal records, and with the “bearded ladies” who attempted to enter in disguise still on bail awaiting charges, there should be no let-up in the pressure being applied internationally and internally.

If the Iranian government and FA are unwilling to at least drop charges against those who have fallen foul of the outdated ban that is not law but crept in as the political Islam of Ayatollah Khomeini took control of the 1979 revolution which birthed the Islamic Republic of Iran, then no goodwill should be afforded them.

The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email.

This one-off match is not the first: some women were allowed to attend the Asian Champions League final last November with Infantino in attendance. But the progress is painstakingly slow. With zero indication that women will be allowed into domestic games any time soon and the next home international match not until 26 March 2020 there is a big gap in the calendar.

There is no reason why the doors cannot be flung open to women on Thursday. The token number being allowed through the segregated turnstiles and walkways into seating that has had high metal fencing welded around it, is just that: tokenistic.

Accommodating this gesture is not enough. A complete lifting of the ban, the removal of charges against women facing prosecution and the removal of criminal records for those who have fought to be allowed to enter should be the bare minimum demands placed on the country’s governing body.