Iran Coach is Contacting FIFA After all Their Friendlies Get Canceled

You can’t mix football and politics. Iran of all countries should know this, since they were suspended by FIFA in 2006 because the government kept meddling in the football association’s affairs.

So how ironic is it that Iran’s coach, Ali Daei, (pictured) is filing a complaint with FIFA over they Egyptian government’s cancellation of an Iran-Egypt friendly? Apparently Egypt doesn’t like a new Iranian movie about the assassination of their former president Anwar Sadat. Politically bothersome movie? No friendly.

Iran is also filing a complaint with FIFA over EPL side Charlton Athletic’s cancellation of a friendly between the two sides, which was also apparently called off for “political problems.” (Excellent headline from the Tehran Times: “Iran to Complain to FIFA Over Charlton’s Perfidy.” Perhaps “perfidy” has a slightly different connotation in Farsi?)

From the BBC:

The game was due to be played this weekend.

However, after Iran conducted missile tests last week, an official from Charlton sent a letter cancelling the game. The Charlton officials said they could not go ahead with the match because of the missile tests.

Another Iranian official said they were complaining to the world football governing body, FIFA, because politics should not be allowed to interfere with sport.

A spokesman for Charlton Athletic said, they “did have discussions about a game but they were never concluded, so it wasn’t right to say the game was cancelled”.

And it’s not just these two. Iran was also scheduled to play at least one game against the Spanish side Malaga, but that has been canceled for “technical reasons.”

Not good for Iran. They’ve had a rather hellish time finding and keeping a coach (see posts here, here here, here and here, and that only brought us up to February) and now they’re having a hellish time finding opponents good enough to get them ready for the next round of qualifying.

They’ve done okay in World Cup qualifying so far — they got a bye through the first two rounds of qualifying due to solid past performance, and they finished top of the group in Round 3. But Round 4 is where things get tough, and they’ll be facing teams like Saudi Arabia and South Korea. They’ll need to be at the top of their game to get through, and things like this aren’t helping.

The Tehran Times, in a different article, sums it up best:

Even the most passionate Team Melli fans wince at the irony of such officials as Mehdi Taj and Mohammad Aliabadi complaining about mixing politics and sport. In the past Iran has been guilty of mixing politics and sports internationally. And as far as football goes — there are few places where the two are entwined like they are in Tehran. Most high-ranking football officials in the capital have not really earned their positions on merit.

Still, if teams around the world don’t want to play Iran then the answer is simple — don’t arrange games against the team. Nobody forced Egypt to agree to play a game against Iran. Presumably, the Egyptians had few problems with the Iranian government when the game was scheduled. …

It is a cliché but football really can bring people together. Watching the wonderful Iranian fans in Frankfurt and Nuremburg in 2006 singing, laughing and joking with their Portuguese and Mexican counterparts was proof of that.

Those Iranian fans, among the most passionate in the world, are the ones who suffer. Less than two months before the final stage of qualification for the 2010 World Cup gets underway, Iran’s preparations are in disarray and it will soon be time for the annual phone calls to [the teams who agreed to friendlies before WC 2006] Bosnia and Costa Rica.

I’ve always been a fan of underdogs, and now I’m finding myself rooting for the Iranian players — first in their attempt to find match opponents, and after that in their World Cup qualifying campaign. Any players who can survive having their game demolished by politics as much as Iran has in the past couple of years deserves to move on.