A Carlisle United Ladies player has launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay for crucial surgery that will help her play the sport she loves.

Mozhgan Ghafouri has been playing football since she was a child living in Iran, but now faces the possibility of not being able to play anymore due to cruciate ligament damage.

She has previously received surgery for an ACL injury but damaged her knee again earlier this year.

“The first day of Ramadan, I had this football match, I was fasting and somehow, I managed to injure my knee again," said Mozhgan. 

“The waiting list is long and private surgery costs around £7,000. I’ve started a GoFundMe page in the hope I can raise the money to have the operation and get back to the game I love.”

Football has had a massive impact on the lives of Mozhgan and her three sisters. 

Their family fled to Iran in the 1990s when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, it was whilst living there that they discovered their love for the game. 

Mozhgan said: “As children we never played with dolls, we would just play football in the streets of Iran with local boys for hours and hours at a time.

"Back then there was no internet, no smartphones, no satellite TV; we knew nothing of other countries and could never even imagine a place where girls could play football.

“But football has this incredible power to bring people together and in Iran, while we were growing up, it became an integral part of a socio-political movement.”

Playing football as a refugee woman in Iran was no easy feat, the sisters would walk eight miles every day in order to train but soon discovered that they wouldn't be able to compete in national competitions. 

They wrote to the UNHCR for help and were given the green light to establish their own team.

With the support from the UN and the Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigration Affairs,  Mozhgan and her sisters set-up Ariana, the first refugee football and footstall female teams in Iran.

"We also set up the Youth Initiative Fund which provides support to 400 vulnerable children per year; this includes education, physical activity, and social support," she said.

“We started a few other projects with UNHCR and volunteered with them recruiting working children who were not in education, running different workshops including football.

The restrictions in Iran were too strict to allow the sisters to pursue their footballing goals so the UNHCR helped them move to the UK.

Mozhgan said: “Working and volunteering for 12 years with UNHCR meant they learnt a lot about us, about our love for football and all the limitations, barriers and obstacles in our way."

They have made a home for themselves in Carlisle and have most recently set up their own business in the Market Hall.

Mozhgan hopes that the GoFundMe campaign will help her continue to play football and thrive on the Carlisle United Ladies team.

The sisters are keen to broaden people's understanding of the difficulties faced by those who are seeking sanctuary.  

"We think people here in the UK don’t necessarily know about the challenges, struggles and the barriers people face, and we wish people were more sympathetic and open-minded to learn more about the reality of why people flee their home countries."