A GROUP of Afghan girls with promising football careers who fled their country after the Taliban takeover will be relocated to Britain in the next few weeks.

The squad, mostly teenagers, have been in Pakistan on temporary 30-day visas since fleeing Afghanistan, but faced being sent back once their asylum period ran out and another country had not accepted them.

“We are working to finalise visas to the Afghanistan women’s football team and look forward to welcoming them to the UK shortly,” a government spokesman said today.

The 35 young players and their families — a total of 130 people — just missed the airlift evacuations from Kabul after their country fell to the Taliban in August.

They were then “in a hugely dangerous life-threatening position should they remain in Afghanistan,” according to the Rokit Foundation, which supported their escape: the militant group has banned girls from playing football, 

They made the journey in small family groups to Pakistan, from where they began the process of applying for UK visas.

A government spokesman said: “The government is committed to doing all it can to support those most in need, including vulnerable women and girls, and those at risk who have had to flee Afghanistan.”

Leeds United is among a number of organisations which had previously urged the government to grant the girls asylum.

Last month, chairman Andrea Radrizzani offered to place all the players on the club’s youth development teams and said it stood ready to “give the girls a prosperous and peaceful future.”

Rokit Foundation chief executive Siu-Anne Marie Gill said: “This has a been a team effort, like football itself, and these young players, with whom we are in regular contact via video calls, are absolutely thrilled and relieved to have been given the opportunities that will come available to them in their new lives in the UK.”

The foundation is the charity arm of venture capital conglomerate the Rokit Group.