At a recent match at Iran’s Azadi Stadium, fans chanted for Ali Kafashian, president of the Iranian Football Federation, to be sacked. Instead, he sacked three of his subordinates.
The men’s team was eliminated last week after it was disciplined for putting on the field a player it had been told was disqualified.
The women’s team was ousted earlier last month after the team came 
While Iran is now out of Olympic soccer, it is progressing well in basketball. In the West Asia qualifying round for Olympic basketball, Iran defeated Jordan 70-72, Syria 83-62 and Iraq 93-52, coming out on top in West Asia. It will go to China in September for the Asian Championships that will determine which Asian teams go to the Olympics in London next year.
But as regards soccer, the outcome was not just poor, but embarrassing.
In men’s soccer, Iran faced Iraq in home and away games. It beat Iraq 1-0 in Iraq June 19. But as Iraq arrived in Tehran Saturday for the second leg, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) notified Iran that it had fielded a player in the first leg who had been suspended by the AFC. Instead of winning the first leg, Iran was disqualified and Iraq awarded a victory by a score of 3-0.
The Mehr news agency said the AFC had written Iran about the suspension but the letter “was weirdly lost.”
Iran could still have won the two-match competition against Iraq if it had won the second match by a score of 4-0. Instead, it lost 2-0. Thus, even if its first victory had not been voided, Iran would still have been eliminated because the aggregate score for the two games would have been 2-1 in Iraq’s favor.
On Sunday, Kafashian fired Fereydun Moini, had of the national team management committee, Asghar Hajilu, supervisor of the Olympic team, and Davud Parhizgar, a member of the team staff.
He did not fire Olympic team coach Ali-Reza Mansurian, who took responsibility for Iran’s elimination. “There are no excuses,” Mansurian said. “Iran showed a bad performance against Iraq in Azadi Stadium and I am responsible for that.”
Iran’s men’s team has qualified for the Olympics four times—but not since 1976, the last Olympics before the revolution.
The team that plays for the Olympics is a team limited to players under the age of 23. It is not the national team that competes for the Asian Cup and the World Cup.
“I think there is a sense of regret in our inability to qualify for the Olympics for [so long],” coach Mansurian said.
On the women’s side, the issue was also the soccer rulebook. But in this case, FIFA, the Swiss-based governing body of international soccer, suggested that Iran had intentionally flouted the rules.
Iran said its women were wearing an approved uniform, but that a Bahraini referee disqualified them. Much of the news coverage in Iran also referred to the Bahraini as the key factor, implying that the disqualification of Iran was a political decision because of the current frictions between Iran and Bahrain.
But FIFA said the Bahraini just enforced the rules of FIFA as he was supposed to.
The Iran Times asked FIFA to explain what had happened last month when Iran was disqualified before a match in Jordan and awarded a 3-0 loss.
FIFA emailed back that the rules it adopted after a back-and-forth with Iran last year still applied: “Players [are] allowed to wear a cap that covers the head to the hairline, but which does not extend below the ears to cover the neck.”
Iran accepted that uniform last year and played in a competition in Singapore wearing it.
FIFA said that before last month’s Olympic qualifying round in Jordan, FIFA briefed the officials who would oversee the matches on the rules and representatives of the five participating teams—Vietnam, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Iran and Jordan.
FIFA told the Iran Times, “Despite initial assurances that the Iranian delegation understood this [dress code], the players came out wearing the hijab and the head and neck totally covered, which was an infringement of the Laws of the Game,” the title of the FIFA rule book.
Iranian officials have been telling reporters in Iran that the women were wearing the same uniform approved by FIFA last year, implying that FIFA changed the rules unilaterally. But FIFA is adamant that the Iranians did not wear the approved uniform.
A photo taken in Jordan shows one Iranian player clearly wearing the banned style of headgear that wraps around the neck. But a player kneeling next to her appears to be wearing a different kind of headgear that does not wrap around the neck.
The outfit accepted last year was a snood or bag that encloses the hair and keeps it completely covered, as the rules of hejab are generally recognized as requiring. FIFA has complained that any hair covering that also wraps around the neck could be a choking hazard, presumably if an opponent grabbed that hair covering and pulled. Many non-Muslims, however, have challenged FIFA’s logic.
President Ahmadi-nejad joined the issue with hostile rhetoric aimed at FIFA officers, whom he labeled “dictators and colonialists” for their position on women’s dress. “We will deal with those who carried out this ugly job,” he said threateningly. “We pursue the inalienable rights of our girls.”
He said, “These are the dictators and colonialists who want to impose their lifestyle on others.” He ignored the fact that Iran had accepted the uniform last year.
There would appear to be some dispute among the religious over the uniform that was accepted last year, with more traditionalists finding it unacceptable because it does not cover the neck. But the chador also does not automatically cover the neck. That left some speculating that hardcore elements who do not wish to see Iranian women playing soccer at all had intentionally elevated the uniform dispute in order to spike women’s soccer. The dispute is not necessarily exclusively an Iranian one. Jordanian team officials said three of their players bowed out of the competition rather than wear the FIFA-approved uniform. But Jordan was able to field a full team.
Meanwhile, the new vice president of FIFA from Jordan has said he will take on the issue of finding an acceptable uniform for Muslim women.
“This is an important issue that I will raise with the Asian Football Confederation and with the International Federation of Association Football [FIFA]. We will work together to find a solution that respects the rules of the game and the culture at the same time,” Prince Ali, King Abdullah’s half brother, told Agence France Presse (AFP).
“Football is about fair play and respect and I am confident that we can resolve this issue,” he said as he took office last month.
The Iranian ambassador to Jordan, Mustafa Muslah Zada told reporters, “FIFA should reconsider its decisions that harm Iranian players. If FIFA continues to impose a certain dress on women, it will lose a lot of players from Arab and Muslim countries. “It is not a sports or football issue. It is a political issue. Politics should not be mixed with sports. What happened was a violation of human rights as well as international and Olympic charters.”