Iran Waits for the Big Result

Khaleej Times:

With presidential elections looming, Iranians are on the edge of their seats. But for many, the burning question is not who their next president will be, but rather if Iran can score a place in the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany. READ MORE

Iranians may be passionate about politics, but when it comes to football they’re absolutely mad.

“It will be chaos, a huge national celebration,” enthused Seyed Mohsen Hosseini, a young supporter who watched Friday’s match against North Korea when the Iranian national team managed a 1-0 win.

With that victory, Iran maintained its lead in Asia’s Group B.

They have just two games left, and a draw on Wednesday will hand Iran a place in the World Cup finals for just the third time in its history.

Judging by what happened the last time Iran qualified, Hosseini could be right.

In 1997, Iran managed an away draw to Australia in a nail-biting game that had Iran two goals down throughout most of the game. That result put them in the World Cup in France, and millions of people across the country took to the streets.

“But that game was in Australia,” Hosseini said, predicting that if Iran can qualify this week, in front of a home crowd at the enormous Azadi stadium in Teheran, the country will see a public reaction “multiplied by ten.”

“There were scenes that had never been seen before,” recounted an Iranian journalist. “People took to the streets spontaneously. Women were dancing, and the police did not even intervene. Even the clerics were dancing.”

A sign of the increasing importance of football here is the attention it is now getting from the ruling clerics, who were once slightly hostile to the game as a form of “Westoxication.”

Ahead of the June 17 election, the clerical regime has been trying to drum up interest in the polls, calling for voters to head out “en masse” as a sign of their loyalty to the regime.

During half-time in the North Korea game, pictures of Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were shown on giant screens. Iranians were also told to “vote en masse” and “smash the Americans and the oppressors in the face.”

Even this revolutionary slogan plays well with the football crowd, still ecstatic over Iran’s 1998 victory in France against the United States.

But one young supporter, Behrouz Fathi, said Wednesday’s home result against Bahrain could influence the elections, with a win and qualification instilling some kind of “national sentiment.”

“I’ll be at the stadium at 7:00 am,” or 12 hours before kick-off, said Behrouz Fathi. “Football is my life. No sensation can match it.”

Next in his priorities this month, he said, come the elections, although his football friends disagreed.

“Elections?” they laughed. “Boring!"