'The national team belongs to the people': Iranians in LA support team at World Cup, but not incumbent government
‘The national team belongs to the people’: Iranians in LA support team at World Cup, but not incumbent government originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Sean Mahabadi approached the LA Stadium in advance of Monday night’s FIFA World Cup game in a group with someone wrapped in the Lion + Sun flag of pre-revolutionary Iran, so it wasn’t difficult to ascertain his position on the current Iran regime. And still he traveled a long way to support Iran as Team Melli debuted against New Zealand.
“The national team belongs to the people, not to any government,” Mahabadi told the Sporting News. “Governments come and go, but the team is ours.”
He left Iran nearly 50 years ago, directly after the Islamic revolution, and lives now in Minnesota. He brought his family all the way to Southern California to see the national team he follows most passionately; when the U.S. played Iran in the final group game in 2022, he acknowledges he was pulling for Iran.
The fans who attended Iran-New Zealand entered a complicated moment in international sports. The United States went to war with Iran on Feb. 28, and the two nations only now appear to have reached agreement on a ceasefire. And yet here was the Iran squad playing a World Cup game on U.S. soil.
There were a number of complaints in advance of the game from Iran captain Mehdi Taremi and head coach Amir Ghalenoei about the inconveniences of changing the site of the team’s training camp from Arizona to Mexico just weeks before their arrival. FIFA banned fans entering the stadium from carrying the pre-revolutionary flag and won an emergency ruling Monday. The woman in Mahabadi’s group said she didn’t plan to carry hers inside. However, several people inside the stadium gates wearing the lion symbol on T-shirts told SN they entered with no comment from ticket-takers or security.
Los Angeles is home to more than a half-million persons of Iranian descent, and TV station KTLA reported many of them were planning to protest outside the stadium prior to the game. There appeared to be an increased police presence as opposed to Friday’s United States opener against Paraguay, including a team of officers on horseback. There were a few dozen men and women bearing the Lion + Sun flag in some form two hours before gametime; reporter Matthew Seedorf of FOX LA posted video of a slightly larger and more overt protest closer to kickoff.
MORE:Iranian national team insists they are searching for ‘peace, joy and victory’ ahead of World Cup
In the earlier period, Kourosh Salman of Irvine, Calif., was accompanied by a gentleman waving the protest flag on a 15-foot pole that rose high above the crowd outside the stadium and made clear to SN they were on site as a protest against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“They massacred our people a few months ago, in January,” he said. “We are here to protest against them, and protest against the team, because the team does not represent Iranian people. The team represents IRGC (Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the Islamic Republic.”
Salman said he supports the ascent to power for Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed by the revolution in 1979. “We support him to make a common Iran, and to make Iran great again,” Salman said. “We want him again in the home country.”
Entering the stadium, there appeared to be more Iran fans on their way in to watch the game than those from New Zealand.
Maz and Michael Vasseghi of Los Angeles wore T-shirts that took a different approach to the flag issue, which replaced the symbol at the center of the Islamic Republic flag and the Lion + Sun symbol with a red heart against the white background between the green stripe above and the red stripe below. They told SN they had found the design on Amazon.
“We are not pro-government, but I think there’s so much separation between people not supporting the team because they’re not pro-government. So we wanted to come up with something peaceful that supports the country and supports the people but does not support the government,” Maz told SN.
“You need to distinguish between the government and the people of Iran,” Michael said. “The team doesn’t have a choice which flag they play under. And they’ve come a long way, they’ve put in a lot of effort, we should be supporting them and not putting them down.”
Perhaps the largest number of people in attendance, surprisingly, were wearing jerseys of anyone but Iran and New Zealand. There people clad in the Argentina jersey, Brazil, Portugal, Inter Milan, San Diego FC and even one with three vertical panels for the three North American hosts of this World Cup: Canada, Mexico, United States.
Salvador Limon of Los Angeles carried his young boy, both of them wearing the jersey of Mexico’s national team, as did several of the friends in his group. Both father and son were attending their first World Cup game.
“I’m here because Mexico has a lot of passion towards futbol, and it doesn’t matter where we go, Mexicans are going to be here. So we’re here representing the love of the game,” Limon said. “It’s hard to separate futbol and politics, but the love of the game is why we’re here. I’m rooting for a lot of goals. I want to see a lot of joy, a lot of goals. I want to see both fans know that their country scored. Every nation, no matter where they stand, have the right to have fun.”
