Nytimes - Soccer and politics are never far apart in Iran, but the mix is at its most combustible every four years in June when the country’s presidential elections take place at the same time that the beloved national team either qualifies for the World Cup or falls short, sometimes in heartbreaking fashion.

Just four days after the vote this Friday, the national team will be the focus of attention as it plays its final game of qualification for the 2014 Cup against South Korea.

That will conjure eerie echoes of June 17, 2009, when Iran played South Korea in a crucial qualifier in Seoul — and managed only a 1-1 draw, not enough to go on to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

The now-outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had much at stake. He had just been re-elected in what the opposition denounced as a rigged vote. And, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks in 2010, he is reputed to be a big soccer fan who had publicly put “a great deal of political capital in Iranian soccer” to bask in the game’s popularity and the bid to make the 2010 Cup.

But the failure was not the full story. That night, almost 70,000 fans at Seoul World Cup Stadium, hundreds of media personnel and millions watching worldwide on television saw six members of the Iranian national team emerge on the field wearing green wristbands — a sign of support for Mir Hussein Moussavi, the presidential candidate who lost to Ahmadinejad.

The defeat of Moussavi sent thousands into the streets of Tehran in what was dubbed the Green Revolution, the color of Moussavi’s election campaign.

Within hours of the game in Seoul, there were reports of demonstrators in Tehran holding aloft pictures of the six players.

Afshin Ghotbi, who was appointed Iran’s national team coach in April 2009 after poor results under his predecessor, Ali Daei, led the team that night in South Korea.

The presidential election “politicized the entire qualification campaign,” Ghotbi said by telephone from Japan, where he is currently coaching. “It was hard for me to understand. I believe all Iranians wanted to see the team go to the World Cup. For me, the national team is not the team of the government, but the team of the people.”

Ghotbi, who left Tehran for California as a teenager in 1977, was well aware what World Cup qualification meant for the soccer-crazy Iranian people. He soon learned what it meant for Ahmadinejad.

Since becoming president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has visited the national team during training on numerous occasions. His most recent visit was last weekend as the players prepared for a vital home game against Lebanon on Tuesday, which Iran won, 4-0. (If Iran beats South Korea this coming Tuesday, it guarantees a spot in the World Cup next year, and it still could get in with a tie or a loss, depending on other results next week.)

Ahmadinejad also was rumored to have been involved in the hiring and firing of Daei as coach and in pushing for certain players to be included in national team rosters.

Ghotbi’s first 2010 World Cup qualifier was a trip to North Korea on June 6, 2009. Ahmadinejad provided the presidential plane so the team could return home as fast as possible for a must-win game against United Arab Emirates in Tehran just four days later. Iran won that game, 1-0.

Iran then failed to get the necessary victory in South Korea. “I do believe the distractions played a big part in our team’s concentration, performance and result,” Ghotbi said, referring to the mass demonstrations and clashes then going on in Tehran. “Our players saw the images on CNN and BBC upon our arrival in Seoul. They were also in communication with friends and family back in Iran, and the violence in the streets consumed their thoughts.”

Ghotbi claimed no prior knowledge of the wristbands. “I still do not know what happened behind the scenes in Seoul, why and who was behind it.”

Nor, he said, did he know why the bands were removed for the second half; he was focused on tactical issues. At the time, people close to the team suggested that there had been government officials in the locker room talking to the players at halftime.

The Iran team manager, Mansour Pourheidari, told reporters at the time that the wristbands were religious in nature. “This was not a political move, but rather players were using an Islamic symbol to defeat Korea,” Pourheidari was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Mehr News Agency of Iran. “Because players felt the move may be mistaken for a political act, we asked the players to take off the wristbands.”


Despite rumors to the contrary, Ghotbi denied that the players had been punished upon their return to Tehran. While three of the players involved retired after the game, all were older than 30. Javad Nekounam was involved in wearing green in 2009 and, as captain, will lead the team in South Korea on Tuesday.

If all goes well and Iran qualifies for the 2014 World Cup, one of the first acts of the president-elect could be to welcome the victorious national team home, though even that might be problematic. The Iranian regime has been wary in the past of large crowds gathering to celebrate World Cup qualification — or mark its failure.

When Iran secured a place at the 1998 World Cup in a November 1997 playoff in Australia, the team was told to take its time coming home by a government concerned about the scale of celebrations in Tehran, especially with the involvement of women.

Nationwide riots broke out in 2001 after Iran was eliminated from the 2002 tournament by Bahrain. The situation was already tense in 2009. “We heard rumors that if the team had won, people would have poured onto the streets using the advancement to the World Cup as an excuse for more protests,” Ghotbi said.

James Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and an expert in the relationship between soccer and politics in the Middle East, said that a repeat of the protests around the election this time was unlikely. “This year’s elections differ from those in 2009 by virtue of the fact that there are no opposition candidates. They have been disbarred. The choice is one between conservatives.”

Whether or not whoever is chosen as the new president is a soccer fan, Dorsey said, he will not be able to ignore the sport.

“It is too big an Iranian passion,” he said, “too much of an opportunity to miss to wield soft power and enhance personal and national prestige.”