February 07 2020
Iranian soccer has been thrown into a fury when the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) said it wouldn’t allow any games in the AFC Champions League to be played in Iran because it didn’t consider the skies to be safe enough to send foreign teams into Iran.
The AFC said the Iranian teams and their opponents would have to play the games originally scheduled for Iran in neutral countries.
Iranian soccer clubs said this was a political decision that was an insult to Iran and absolutely baseless, despite Iran having shot down a Ukrainian passenger a few days before the AFC ruling.
The Champions League is a competition among Asian clubs that do well in their national leagues. It is different from the World Cup and Asian Cup where teams composed of selected players from each nation play against other national teams.
This year, four Iranian clubs have qualified for the Champions League playoffs—Persepolis, Sepahan, Shahr Khodro and Esteghlal.
The four teams all said they refused to play in a neutral country. This was viewed by many as odd since failure to show up for a game means the absent team is declared the loser by default and the opponent is declared the winner and given three points for a victory.
“The AFC’s decision to move matches out of Iran is unprofessional and political,” President Rohani’s chief of staff, Mahmud Vaezi, said. “This is an unsporting and unprofessional move. As we examine it, we realize this has become a political issue.”
Sports Minister Masud Soltanifar later said the order to reject the AFC proposal came from the highest political level—meaning Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi. That meant the teams really had no choice.
The AFC then came forward with a new proposal January 23.
It suggested the first two games of the group stage scheduled for Tehran as home games for the Iranian teams would be switched to away games. That means Persepolis, due to play Sharjah of the UAE in Tehran February 18 will now go to the UAE for that match, while Sepahan, due to play a team yet-to-be-determined in Tehran February 11, will go to that yet-to-be-determined club team’s home that day.
The expectation is that the flying issue will be resolved by April 20 when Sepahan’s away game is now due to be played. The away games for Sepahan and Persepolis (scheduled for May 4) would then become home games for those Iranian teams.
A further wrinkle is that the other two Iranian clubs, Shahr Khodro and Esteghlal, were due to play one-shot preliminary matches in Iran January 21. Those matches were postponed. Since these were one-shot matches with no home and away balance, the switching of home and away matches could not be done. Instead, the AFC proposed January 23 that the postponed games be played on neutral territory, the UAE, on January 27. The two teams agreed—despite what they had earlier said. They both won. Esteghlal walloped Al-Rayyan of Qatar 5-0 while Shahr Khodro finished in a scoreless tie with Al-Sailiya of Qatar and then won 5-4 in a penalty shootout.
The issue had become so touchy that the Iranian media were not even allowed to accurately report the AFC’s proposed compromise. Instead, they reported the AFC had backed down in the face of strong Iranian objections. For example, state television said, “The Asian Football Confederation has retreated from its initial decision.” While the Fars news agency said, “The Asian Football Confederation canceled a ban on Iranian soccer clubs hosting the upcoming Champions League matches.”
No publication was seen to report the AFC proposal as a compromise. The entire idea of a compromise is viewed as an anathema by the Islamic Republic, which describes compromises as an act of oppression by the other party.
Most major international airlines not based in the Middle East stopped flying into or over Iran after the January 8 shootdown of the Ukrainian airliner. Ironically, on the same day that the AFC announced its compromise proposal, January 23, KLM, the Dutch national airline, said it would resume flights across Iran—but not land there as planes carrying teams would have to do.
Security concerns between Iran and its neighbors have affected the involvement of the country’s clubs in the Asian Champions League in the past.
Since 2016, matches between clubs from Iran and Saudi Arabia have been played in neutral venues due to concerns raised by the Saudis over the safety of their players when they are in Iran after players were pelted with refuse by fans during a 2016 match. Khamenehi may have feared that the 2016 concession to the Saudis would become a general practice of forcing Iran to play in neutral locales.
No Iranian club has won the Asian Champions League since it was created in 2002, with Tehran-based Persepolis coming closest in 2018 when it lost in the final to Japan’s Kashima Antlers.