Heightened emotions in Iran after Team Melli knocked out of World Cup
The Iranian team were desperately unlucky not to reach the knockout phase, hamstrung by poor luck and unprecedentedly tough restrictions. Tehran, Iran – Iran’s national
The Iranian team were desperately unlucky not to reach the knockout phase, hamstrung by poor luck and unprecedentedly tough restrictions. Tehran, Iran – Iran’s national football team has once again failed to realise the dream of reaching the knockout phase of the World Cup, with the wartime 2026 tournament stirring up a wide range of emotions among Iranians inside and outside the country for different reasons. Team Melli ended its seventh appearance in the tournament after a 1-1 draw in Seattle on Friday against Egypt left them in third place in Group G, with only three points gleaned from three draws. The team was eliminated a day later, after a series of other match results left them just outside of the tournament’s eight third-placed teams advancing to the next stage after FIFA expanded from 32 to 48 teams. “This was very unlikely to happen, I couldn’t believe how we got out again, with just one spot away from advancing,” Milad, a resident of Tehran who watched all matches impacting Iran’s run at the World Cup, told Al Jazeera. The circumstances were so peculiar that, among other things, they left the head coach pondering divine intervention, and state television accusing other teams of cheating and collusion. During the Egypt match, centre-back Shoja Khalilzadeh appeared to score a 93rd-minute winner that would have automatically sent Iran into the Round of 32, but VAR ruled it out after a few centimetres of his right foot were offside. A member of the coaching staff had his nose broken after another staff member inadvertently headbutted him during emotional group celebrations of the goal before it was overturned. Khalilzadeh’s goal celebration included posing with sunglasses, so Egypt – which advanced to the knockout phase – later taunted him with an Instagram picture of striker Mohamed Salah giggling while wearing sunglasses.
A disgruntled head coach Amir Ghalenoei told state television during a live post-match interview that he believed everyone enjoyed the match, but at times it seemed like “God was at odds with us” due to the lack of good luck – which also included Iran scoring three VAR-overturned goals during the competition, the highest of any team. He also blamed tough conditions faced by the players and the entire staff during an unprecedented World Cup campaign, in which the main host country, the United States, has been at war with a participating nation, Iran, for the past four months. The US military bombed several islands in the Strait of Hormuz in Iran’s southern waters just hours before kick-off in the Iran-Egypt match. Football federation officials, as well as other staff and media personnel, were denied visas to travel to the US for the tournament, on grounds that included their alleged affiliation with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the force running war and politics in Iran. The playing squad was only allowed in under unusually tight restrictions, and had to be mostly based in Mexico’s Tijuana instead of the originally designated Tucson in Arizona. They had to enter the US within 24 hours of a match and leave on the same day, with only a slight easing allowing them to arrive two days early for the Seattle match. ‘Completely mad’ After the Egypt match, Iran needed just one of three things to go their way: Croatia had to lose to Ghana, but it won 2-1; DR Congo had to fail to beat Uzbekistan, but won 3-1; and Algeria vs Austria had to produce a winner, but the match ended 3-3. Hours before the Algeria-Austria match, Javad Khiabani, a sports presenter infamous for decades of eccentric football commentary, released a video message in Arabic, addressed to the “Muslim brothers in Algeria”.
The BriefWire