December 1, 2023
The Esfahan soccer club Sepahan has been punished by Asian soccer authorities for displaying a bust of the late Gen. Qassem Soleymani on its field a violation of soccer’s ban on political displays at games during an international match with Saudi Arabia’s Al Ittihad team.
Sepahan was penalized with a 3-0 loss and a fine of $200,000 over a canceled Asian Champions League match, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) announced.
The match was never played as the Saudi team walked out after seeing the bust of the assassinated general on the sidelines.
There was a major brouhaha that Iran’s Foreign Ministry quickly sought to stem. It soon announced that an agreement had been reached to reschedule the match, amid concerns that the incident could further strain the recent rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
But the AFC Disciplinary Committee over-ruled that Foreign Ministry ploy, fining Sepahan and handing it a loss in the Asian Champions League, which is an annual competition among Asian soccer clubs, not national teams.
The AFC also said Sepahan was banned from hosting its next three Asian Champions League home matches and it was ordered to remove the bust from the field or face “more severe punishment.”
Al Ittihad was set to play Sepahan October 2, but the team did not come out on the field, where some 60,000 fans waited for the match to start. Saudi Arabia’s state-run Al Ekhbariya TV said they refused to come out because of the bust of Soleymani placed outside the entrance tunnel. It wasn’t clear if the bust was placed there just before this game or had been there for some time.
While Soleymani is seen as a hero by Iran’s clerical rulers and their supporters, he is vilified by many Arab regimes because of his role in leading Iran’s military activities across the region. He was killed in a American drone strike aimed at him in Iraq in January 2020.
