Of all the teams that had a rough run at the World Cup, no one had it worse than Iran. I suppose you could say Italy, because the four-time champion has now missed the past three Cups. But of the teams that actually made it, Iran had it worst. For starters, they were the first team to miss the 32 team knock out stage, ranked 33rd after group play. They ended up tying all three games, missing the coveted three points that come with a win. Still, with three points, a long list of things needed to happen on the final days for them not to make it. And as luck would have it, that’s how it went. So they’re going home early.
Of course, that’s probably not the worst of it for Iran. What was just as bad as the results of their games was the time in between, especially their time in the US, where they played all three of their matches. Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t where they trained or stayed, as the US mandated they move their training headquarters from Arizona to Tijuana. They also only allowed the Iranian team to stay in the US the night before a match, then head back to Mexico immediately after. Several members of the Iranian federation were never allowed in. And to add insult to injury, when Iran was officially eliminated, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that they were so happy and, as he said, did a happy dance for being able to send them home.
To be clear, Iran was never a threat to win the Cup or go particularly far. I’m sure I’m not the only one who held a lurid fascination with what it might look like if Trump had to hand the trophy to the Iranian team at the Finals, but that was never going to happen – for like 100 reasons. The US claimed that nearly half of the non-playing Iranian delegation was part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, a determinant for how the team was treated. I’m sure that’s consequential for those in national security, but it’s certainly beyond my expertise and probably obfuscates the more basic point here, at least from the vantage of global sport.
The question here isn’t about individual delegates or even the particular treatment of one team, although that is relevant. What is most important is the overall place of global sporting events like the World Cup, one overseen by a sporting body accountable to no one other than the largess of their business. We naturally assume, naively or otherwise, that the World Cup and other events like it – say, the Olympics – aspire to create something of a level playing field. Yes, no such thing exists, given natural disparities in the field. But at least once they enter the umbrella of competition, they’d all have a fair shot.
Of course, that’s exactly what didn’t happen. And it didn’t happen because one host nation has a grievance with one competing nation. And they, or shall I say we, were allowed to use geopolitics as the basis for punishment. And FIFA, who again is in charge of this thing, offered less resistance than a doorman at a college bar. And if you have even a speck of cynicism in your soul as you should, you’d suggest that’s because of the uneasy but predictable alliance between FIFA and Trump to together serve their individual self-interests. Which is why the US was, against any reasonable read of FIFA’s mandate, allowed to treat one competing team vastly different than the rest. And to be clear, this is not a defense of Iran and their history of abhorrent behavior. There are times when a country should be banned from global competition for a list of reasons. Some can argue that Iran should have been. But that’s not what happened. What happened was a was the world’s most powerful man decided to us sport as a way to punish his enemy, and the global body charged with preventing that just rolled over – because they aligned on a common interest for power and money. Which is why one country that was not banned from competition had to sleep in a different country than where they played.
And why of all the teams at the World Cup, Iran had it the worst.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University.
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