Football: Men in Iran women's side?

File photo of the Iran women's football team. Photo / Getty

Eight of Iran's women's football team are men who are awaiting sex swap operations, it has been claimed.

The country's football bosses have been branded 'unethical' for fielding the genetically more powerful players.

Officials have now reportedly ordered the gender testing of the entire national team and the top players in their country's competitive league.

"(Eight players) have been playing with Iran's female team without completing sex change operations," Mojtabi Sharifi, an official close to the Iranian football league, said according to Iranian media.

This is not the first time the team has been involved in a gender scandal.

Just last year, four players were found to be men and in 2010 questions were asked about the national team's goalkeeper.

This resulted in the sports Iranian governing body introducing mandatory gender-testing in 2014.

Sex change operations have been legal in Iran since 1979, when the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious ruling giving them the go-ahead.

The legality of sex change procedures contrasts with the country's otherwise strict laws regarding sexual morality under the nation's Sharia code, which forbids homosexuality and pre-marital sex, among other things.

Those who cannot prove their gender are barred from competing in the women's competition, but they can be re-admitted after completing gender reassignment.

"If these people can solve their problems through surgery and be in a position to receive the necessary medical qualifications, they will then be able to participate in [women's] football," Ahmad Hashemian, head of the Iranian football federation's medical committee, said last year.

It is not known how many of the current team were born males, The Sun reported.

Mr Sharifi did not name the eight players at the centre of the current controversy.

Football is immensely popular in Iran among both men and women, even though women are not able to attend games between male teams.

The national team play in long-sleeved tops, tracksuit bottoms and hijabs.

The Iranian women's futsal team made headlines around the world this week for their slinky skills after being crowned champions of the 2015 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Championship.

Futsal is a version of five-a-side-football played mainly indoors, which was developed in Brazil in the 1930s

Earlier this month, the team's captain, Niloufar Ardalan, 30, was banned from competing in the championship because her husband was reportedly refusing to let her leave the country.

Under Islamic law, she required permission from her husband to get her passport renewed and he wanted her home for their seven-year-old son's first day at school.

-Daily Mail