continued into the 1950s with Alfredo Di Stefano to the fore. More great players followed, including Daniel Passarella and Mario Kempes.
In contrast to Boca, River have a reputation for producing stylish teams and players who fit within that framework. Current stars Ariel Ortega and Barcelona-bound starlet Javier Saviola as well as Valencia’s Pablo Aimar are classic River players.
The Ultimate Showdown Iran v Iraq, October 2001
More than a million people died when the two nations fought in the 1980s. Today, the only battle that counts lasts for just ninety minutes…
Tehran’s thoroughfares buzz with anticipation, the streets seeming to move as one in a westwards direction towards the Azadi national stadium. Here Iran will today take on their bitter rivals Iraq in a win-at-all-costs World Cup qualifier.
The pace is glacially slow, but there is a harmony that is rare in Iran these days. The atmosphere is charged, but the fans smile and salute each other. Flags are draped over every tree and lamp-post, and Iranians lose themselves in a nationalistic fervour which is usually denied them.
‘This is what it used to be like, when the Shah was in charge,’ a 73-year-old university lecturer turned shoe-shiner tells me. ‘Then we were told it was all right to be proud of being Iranian. Now we are told that our nationality doesn’t matter, that Islam is all that matters. But whoever says that should go and look at all the historical sites that litter Iran. We are an ancient land and our spirit is strong. We will prevail over anyone who tries to dampen our national spirit.’
Inside the stadium, their team emerges to the thunderous acclaim of 110,000 Iranians packed like pilchards in a tin. There are no Iraqi fans here, only the few officials who have travelled with the team. The Iraqi national anthem is played out to a stony silence but there are no jeers. When the Iranian anthem begins, though, the mood changes; the crowd boos, and the players, who mouth the words, look embarrassed. ‘They hate anything that reminds them of the State,’ a photographer from one of Iran’s leading daily newspapers tells me. ‘This isn’t their national anthem, this is the State’s…’
In 1979, a year after reaching their first World Cup finals in Argentina, Iran underwent a dramatic change. The Shah, an absolute monarch who favoured Western values, was overthrown. By nature protective of their culture, Iranians had felt increasingly threatened by the Shah’s policies. In his place, the Mullahs (Muslim clerics), led by Ayatollah Khomeini, came to power. The Islamic Revolution of that year transformed Iran from one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse cultures in the Middle East into the most introspective.
Ironically, those same Iranians who wanted to preserve their national identity now found their country dominated by Islam, a religion that does not recognise borders. Far from being encouraged to be proud Iranians, they found themselves pushed, first and foremost, to be dutiful, obedient Muslims.
Worse still, a year later, in 1980, Iran and Iraq went to war. The first Gulf War, actually a dispute over territorial control of the shipping lanes of the Shatt-al-Arab waterways, lasted for eight years. In Iran, it was given the spin variously of Jihad (or Holy War) and ‘The Imposed War’ and proved a useful propaganda tool for Khomeini. According to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq was the pawn of Western influence, armed by the USA and France. Those who died fighting them were exalted as martyrs. It became one of the bloodiest conflicts on record. In the second year of the war, Iraq made moves towards a peace settlement, but Khomeini rejected them, saying that Iran would ‘fight until the last drop of blood’. An estimated 1.2 million people died on both sides, yet thirteen years after the final drop of blood was spilled the government still celebrates the beginning of the fighting, with ‘Holy Defence Week’.
The young (under-30s) who form 70 per cent of the population don’t remember much about the war. They care little either, brushing it aside and trying to keep themselves entertained. In Iran today, entertainment is mostly of the home variety. Although banned, many homes have satellites. The Internet, which is not banned but under heavy surveillance, allows the young another entry point to the outside world.
They see what the world has to offer, but can rarely interact. Football offers an outlet to vent their frustration at this debilitating state of affairs. The fact that Iran has a strong team helps. ‘We want the sort of freedom that young people have everywhere else; the freedom to laugh, the freedom to dance, the freedom to celebrate our successes. When we watch Iran play football we feel these freedoms,’ says Amir Mahdian, a 21-year old receptionist and devoted follower of the national side.
The passion that this has generated means football personalities in Iran are bigger than pop stars elsewhere. Ali Daei, the national team captain is a UNICEF ambassador like Geri Halliwell. ‘Daei is a legend to us; he has achieved what every Iranian dreams of, he has accomplished success abroad [with Bayern Munich and Hertha Berlin in the Bundesliga], and he represents his country with pride,’ says Mohammad Heydari, 15, from Tehransar.
Reaching the World Cup finals in 1998 meant that Iran came into contact not only with host nation France, but with the rest of the world. Much more than the chance to score a political point by beating the USA (or rather ‘The Great Satan’), this was an opportunity, and one which the nation and national team grabbed with both hands.
Qualifying for Korea and Japan in 2002 and renewing those tentative contacts with the outside world quickly became an obsession for Iranians. ‘Iran must go to the World Cup, it is necessary; no one can imagine anything else,’ Dariush Kabiri told me in the days leading up to the first qualifier against Saudi Arabia, a game that would give me my first taste of football in Iran.
Walking away from the stadium after that match, I felt a glow of satisfaction I had never felt anywhere else. It was strange, because the Azadi is not a glorious venue, but there was something there. It wasn’t the huge crowd – officially 100,000, but probably closer to 115,000 with all the standing tickets that are illegally sold at the turnstiles – or the propaganda slogans that are plastered between the upper and lower tiers. I just felt proud of ‘our’ boys, and their 2–0 win over a team they had not beaten for five years. Suddenly I, like so many other football fans before, had become absorbed into the throng.
Dreaming in that schoolboy kind of way, about all the possible permutations involved, the one name that kept cropping up was Iraq. Iraq, our most bitter rivals, Iraq the perennial party poopers, Iraq our foe. What surprised me was how laid back most Iranians were about the Iraqis. I thought I’d hear frenzied bouts of expletives and censure. Instead, to a man and woman I heard that ‘the war is the past’, that ‘the Iraqis aren’t so bad’, and that ‘it is only a game after all’. Still, they didn’t hide the fact that beating the Iraqis would be sweeter than beating most other opponents.
Iraq is an Arab country. Iraqis speak Arabic, a language with its roots in Hebrew. Iranians are not Arabs and most do not want to be. Their language is Farsi, derived from northern India over 7,000 years ago. Now, though, twenty-two years after the Shah was overthrown, many Iranians again fear that their national identity is being eroded. This time the threat comes not from the west, but from the Arabisation of Iran favoured by its religious leaders.
Those leaders have become increasingly aware of the strength of feeling the country’s football team generates. When Iran visited Iraq to play the first of the two World Cup qualifiers between the countries, the Islamic Republic of Iran saw an opportunity. These are heroes representing Islam, they wanted to say, figureheads not for Iran, but for Islam.
Because, ironically, the most significant shrines to Shia Muslim (the dominant religion in Iran) are in Iraq, the Iranian national team were sent to visit
