Hank Steinbrecher was on a bullet train from Marseille to Paris when he got a call from the White House. “We are going to win this game, aren’t we?” the voice on the other side asked Steinbrecher, then US Soccer Federation’s general secretary. It was 1998. “The news is going around the world.”
Mohammad Khakpour, too, received a call; not from a high-ranking government official but from the family members of those who had lost their children in the war between Iran and Iraq. “Fathers, mothers called and said this game really does matter to us,” the former Iran defender says in the BBC documentary, ‘The Great Game’. “You have to go and win this game for us.”
On paper, it was merely a group-stage match of the World Cup between two teams that had lost their opening matches. But a meeting between two nations who had severed diplomatic relations in 1980 was always going to be much more than a mere game of football.
“Others,” the Iran coach Jalal Talebi says in the documentary, “called it ‘the mother of all games’ and the ‘match of the century’.” Or, ‘the Great Satan’ taking on ‘the Axis of Evil’.
As the United States and Iran prepare to face each other in a winner-takes-all Group B match in Doha on Tuesday (12.30 am, Wednesday, IST), the backdrop won’t be as politically-charged as it was when the two teams met the last time – which was also their first meeting – back in 1998.
The fire, though, has been lit. Iran is witnessing mass protests since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody in September for allegedly violating the country’s hijab laws. Hundreds, according to media reports, of protestors have since died. There have been demonstrations in the stands in Qatar and on the field, the Iranian football team, as a show of solidarity to the protestors, refused to sing the national anthem during their first match of the World Cup.
Then, to further heighten the tensions, the US Soccer Federation removed the emblem from the Iran flag to show its support to the protestors. In retaliation, the Iranians want the USA banned for 10 games, citing FIFA’s rules, for ‘offending the country’s dignity’.
In midst of all this, it’s easy to forget what’s at stake for both teams: a spot in the Round of 16 of the World Cup.
And yet, the drama is nowhere close to the tensions leading up to their first encounter, 14 years ago.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Borokpost staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
