Iran
Creating distance between politics, culture, and soccer
National soccer teams are not merely collections of a country’s best players; they are a representation of their nation, ambassadors on a global stage. National teams aim to reflect the places from which they come; Brazil’s samba style, the Netherlands’ vanguard tactics, England’s physicality, and Italy’s elegance are not merely strategies, but embodiments of their respective history, values, and culture. However, contrary to these examples, Iran’s national team strives not to represent, but to rebuke its country’s international reputation and the restrictive elements of its culture, such as Shari’a law.
In the 1970’s, soccer was on the rise in Iran. The Shah had favored the development of the game and the national team as a means to cultivate nationalism, or, in the eyes of his critics, to distract the public from the corruption and awful conditions that plagued the country. Regardless of the motivations, Iran’s national team produced results. Iran won the Asian championship three consecutive times in 1968, 1972, and 1976, and qualified for its first World Cup in 1978, performing admirably at the tournament.
Less than a year later though, hopes of the national team furthering its success were dashed by revolution and the institution of a government that saw sports both as a representation of the old guard and a threat to the new establishment. For 10 years, the national team played sparingly, with the government barring it from playing in World Cup qualifying, and there was no domestic league.
In order to make progress and achieve success, the Iran Football Federation has had to separate itself from the intrusive and destructive force of its own government. Soccer has grown — in Iran as is often the case in other countries — not because of but in spite of bureaucratic interference by the government or the soccer federation. In the streets of Tehran and other Persian cities, pickup games cultivated young talent and led to another promising generation after the previous one had been lost amid the revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.
By the late nineties, Iran boasted a growing domestic league, a competitive national team, and a talented group of players led by Ali Daei, who remains to this day the world’s all-time leading international goalscorer. These auspicious circumstances led to the country’s first qualification for the World Cup since the revolution; however, once again, government meddling threatened the team’s focus and potential for success.
Having seen the enormous popularity for the team generated during the qualifying campaign, the Iranian government attempted to exert control over the team. The Ayatollah publicly rallied the country around the team and, when the team were in the same group as the United States, meddled tremendously with team affairs, banning — among other things — the team from walking toward the Americans to shake hands as was required by FIFA regulations.
The Iran Football Federation managed to distance itself from the Ayatollah and achieved what has to this point in time proven to be, on and off the field, the greatest success in the nation’s soccer history. Contrary to the caustic rhetoric of the government prior to the game, the Iranian players carried white roses, a Persian symbol of peace, onto the field against the United States, and posed for a picture with the teams intermixed to distinguish themselves from the tense political environment surrounding them. In the game that followed, Iran triumphed over the heavily favored United States by a score of 2-1, its only victory in the history of the tournament.
Today, the objectives of the federation and those of the government continue to be at odds. Following what FIFA deemed to be government interference with the federation, all Iranian national teams were banned until systemic changes were made to create distance between the two entities. Now, the composition of the national team and the support behind it represents a stark departure from the conservatism that has managed to keep a stranglehold over the various facets of Iranian culture since 1979.
The team going to the 2014 World Cup is coached by a westerner, Carlos Queiroz, unlike the native Iranians that preceded him. Several of the team’s stars play not in Iran but in western Europe, in England, Spain, and the Netherlands. The right-back, Steven Beitashour, was born, raised, and attended college in the United States, currently playing for the Vancouver Whitecaps of Major League Soccer. The goalkeeping coach, hired by the federation, is American born in Connecticut.
Instead of representing the dominant culture of its country, the national team personifies a youth rebellion against the theocratic establishment in Iran. Playing a sport that the Ayatollah has never favored, with a team of western-minded individuals, and backed by enthusiastic young Iranians, the squad comes to Brazil not as a symbol of its country’s culture or a tool of politicians. Rather, those 23 players will play for the love of the game, for the future of their careers, and the pride for a modern Iran, one that reality hasn’t caught up with just yet.
