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GOAL - When Iran announced that on November
11th and 13th it would host a four team tournament with Paraguay, Togo and
Romania, the news was greeted with lots of enthusiasm. After all this was to
be an LG-sponsored tournament and Iranian Football Federation had been
heavily criticized for not having a cohesive friendly preparation plan.
However, over the last week, the tournament began to unravel.
First, for a few days, Iran and South Korea’s political relationship went
sour and put the whole LG sponsorship in doubt.
Second, Romania announced that it would not participate in the competition.
The official reasoning was that the team is tired however newspapers and
sports media inside Romania reported the political pressure from the
government onto the Romanian football federation to skip the tournament was
the real reason for not showing up. Interestingly, Romania quickly managed
to get passed the tiredness of her national team and searched for another
opponent on the same dates of the trip to Iran.
Third, it was announced that Macedonia would participate with a youth team
or a B-C level team.
Fourth, it was announced that Paraguay would send a B team.
Finally, as Iranian sports media and football officials were trying to
figure out the mess that have been created over the past seven days, the
news came that Iran no longer desired LG to be the sponsor of the tournament
(despite the written contract with this Korean company) due to the tense
relationship between the two governments. The solution was that an unnamed
sponsor would take over.
While absorbing and making sense of this chaos requires patience and a clear
mind, it is now reported in the Iran’s media that Togo has possibly pulled
out of the tournament.
At this point, in the best case scenario, Paraguay’s B team, Macedonia’s C
team, Iran national team and an iffy Togo would participate in a tournament
that has lost its sponsor.
The more likely scenario is that this tournament will get postponed
indefinitely.
Kaveh Mahjoob
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