Team Melli, once a rare source of Iranian unity, is now yet another fault line.
As the Islamic Republic of Iran’s national football team began its 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign on June 15, a group of Iranian Americans in the SoFi Stadium stands was preoccupied with an unusual sewing project. A month earlier, the world’s governing body for the sport had made clear it would accede to the IRI regime’s demand that it enforce “respect for the Iranian flag” by banning the prerevolutionary Lion and Sun flag from tournament venues. A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order against the ban was rejected by a judge just hours before the Iran–New Zealand kickoff. Well prepared, the sewers in the stands had crafted an oversize Lion and Sun flag divided into parts for clandestine entry and were now reassembling it to make a defiant display.
In previous World Cups, football served as a singular, apolitical point of agreement for Iranians under flags of three stripes or 13. In cities across Iran, fans would pour into the streets in solidarity after every match, as in 2014, when even a loss to Argentina saw massive crowds celebrating the team’s performance. In 2018, when Iran defeated Morocco on a last-minute own goal, there were cheers from Los Angeles to New York to Washington, DC, including from more than a few waving or wearing the Lion and Sun. Those days now feel distant.
Most Iranians, both at home and abroad, were once willing to overlook players’ political affinities and accept football as separate from politics, but the divisions that deepened after the September 2022 killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini by the Islamic Republic’s morality police for improperly wearing her hijab, which set off months of intense protests, are increasingly unbridgeable. The mass protests this past January and the regime’s ferocious crackdown, in which thousands of defenseless Iranians were killed, have become a hard dividing line for many, splitting them into opposing camps and fundamentally altering their relationship with Team Melli, as the squad is known (melli, national).
In different ways, two long-time professionals chosen to play for Team Melli in years past articulated the transformation in the national spirit. “Football is like life,” said midfielder Soroush Rafiei, still active in Iran’s top-flight league. “When people in a society aren’t doing well and their spirits are low, football without supporters—football played in an empty stadium—has no pleasure, no passion, no soul … A wise man once said that small pains leave you with few words, great pains leave you speechless. I’m speechless now.”
On February 24, former goalkeeper Mohammad Rashid Mazaheri, who retired in 2024, held then Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei personally responsible for the bloodshed, warning that “Khamenei, the Islamic Republic, and their mafia will pay for this.” He disappeared the following day. (On May 20, authorities confirmed what many suspected: Mazaheri had been seized and imprisoned on charges including “propaganda activities against national security.”)
The divisions deepened further after the war with the US and Israel began on February 28, meaning the World Cup for Team Melli would involve competing not only on the pitch but in a high-stakes political conflict. As Hossein Yekta, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) plainclothes operations commander and mobilization strategist, proclaimed at a rally for the squad: “Our Team Melli boys, our young men, are going into an arena that is itself a battlefield.” For decades, the regime could count on football as a space for releasing or distracting from social tensions. Now, with players vetted for political allegiance and the Islamic Republic’s participation in the tournament exploited in state propaganda, that space has effectively disappeared. The quadrennial global competition exposed the widening rift in public sentiment toward not only the government but national identity as well, with many one-time fans no longer willing to compartmentalize sports as a realm outside of politics.
Team Melli’s squad selection process intensified divisions, with some labeling the team a “retirement home” due to its reliance on older players in their mid- to late 30s. Critics argued that merit was sidelined in favor of political loyalty, pointing to the exclusion of emerging talents like Alireza Koushki and Allahyar Sayyadmanesh, as well as the omission of Sardar Azmoun, a proven world-class player reportedly expelled from the team for political dissent. Azmoun ran up against the regime’s red line with an Instagram post on January 8, the day the government massacres began, that reads: “As an athlete, I will always stand with the people of my country. I hope and pray that my people’s hearts find peace.” He crossed it on March 17, when he posted a photo in which he appears with Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, where Azmoun plays club ball and which, though a non-belligerent, was repeatedly targeted by Iranian drones and missiles during the 40 days of open war.
Backers of the regime castigated any Iranians, whether domestic or diasporic, who might dare oppose the team. Among the most prominent was Alireza Dabir, an Olympic wrestling champion in 2000 and current head of Iran’s wrestling federation. Four years ago, he and a group of federation members were barred from entering the US for a competition after he opined on state media, “We always chant ‘Death to America,’ but [what’s] important is showing it in action.” In early June, before the World Cup began, he declared that since last year’s 12-day war with Israel and the US, Iran no longer has “reformists and fundamentalists, but only patriots and traitors.” According to Dabir, “Anyone who does not wish success for the national football team is a traitor to the homeland.” His description of Iranians, wherever they might live, as treasonous if they opposed the regime and the team picked to represent it was echoed by IRGC-controlled Fars News and former football federation chief Ali Kafashian, who asserted before the tournament, “It would not be surprising if certain opposition groups and traitors attempted to disrupt Team Melli … Iran’s players must confront these distractions with focus and determination, like soldiers on the battlefield.”
The behavior of players welcome on the squad further deepened the rift. Most conspicuously, center back Shoja Khalilzadeh openly identified as a “soldier of the Islamic Republic,” participated in state propaganda, and even promised to dedicate any goals he might score to the late Ali Khamenei. Other team members drew the ire of regime opponents for making aggressive gestures toward Iranian Americans in the World Cup stands or dismissive comments regarding the January crackdown. For the most part, the players have simply refused to address the mass murder of their countrymen by Revolutionary Guard and kindred regime forces. For many former supporters, this silence and compliance constitute unforgivable betrayals of the Iranian people.
The consequences were visible as the team played its three World Cup games, two in Los Angeles County, one in Seattle: it was met with street protests, in-stadium booing of its national anthem, and watch-party chants of “dishonorable” from members of an increasingly angry diaspora. And alongside the intrepid sewers of SoFi, many additional spectators managed to evade the FIFA ban and smuggle in flags and other items featuring the Lion and Sun emblem. Still, there were unambivalent fans of the team in attendance as well. Those opposed were especially indignant about the women, as one Angelina put it, “who are not allowed into stadiums in Iran, yet used American freedoms to attend matches but still supported the Islamic Republic.” (Western viewers who have seen Jafar Panahi’s 2006 film Offside are familiar with the plight of female football fans under Islamist rule.)
Meanwhile, Iranian state media amplified coach Amir Ghalenoei’s complaints that the team was the “most oppressed” in the tournament, framing it as a victim of American mistreatment. High on his list of grievances, many of those named to the team’s traveling executive staff had been denied visas to enter the US—Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that “almost half” of Iran’s intended delegation outside the playing squad were directly linked to the IRGC.
The 2026 World Cup officially ended for Team Melli on June 27, when Austria and Algeria played to a draw in the group stage’s final game, advancing both to the knockout rounds—had either won, or had the result in either of two games earlier in the day broken Iran’s way, Team Melli would have progressed. Afterward, Alireza Dabir blamed the letdown in part on the behavior of Iranians living abroad, who he said should be “taught a lesson.” Where pride in the team’s strong effort (three matches without a loss) and disappointment in its failure to advance would once have been near-universal, public reaction to its participation in the tournament was instead the most polarized in Iranian history.
To map the complexities of the polarization among those who don’t hesitate to identify as Iranian yet don’t feel obliged to parrot the regime, Resanegar, Tehran Bureau’s Persian-language website, interviewed four fans typifying three divergent viewpoints, highlighting the deeply personal and often conflicting stakes of following Team Melli in the current political landscape.
1. The Compartmentalist: Putting Football First
Pezhman, an émigré who now lives in Massachusetts, remembers a time when the national football team served as a powerful rallying point. He cites the historic World Cup match against the US in 1998, when he still lived in Iran, as a moment when political tension fueled a sense of collective fighting spirit that brought Iranians together, regardless of how they viewed the regime.
“When Iran won that match,” he recalled, “I think that political atmosphere may even have contributed to the victory, because it created a different sense of fighting spirit among the players, and it does create that kind of feeling … When Iran won, a lot of people were very happy.”
From his perspective, expecting players to take political risks is unreasonable, particularly in a post-2022 environment where dissent carries severe professional consequences. He argues that players like Voria Ghafouri, a prominent footballer blacklisted for his support of the Mahsa Amini, or Woman, Life, Freedom, protests, are exceptions who paid dearly, while most footballers remain focused solely on their professional ambitions.
“You cannot have such an expectation from a footballer, someone who has devoted his entire life to football,” they said. “His only concern has been to play football, to join a proper club, then reach the national team, then go and play for a European club and reach a better place. Then, in the middle of all this, a movement emerges and you tell him to come and join that movement. He does not even understand what this movement is. Right now, if you ask half of these footballers what the [2022 protests] were about, they cannot say two sentences about it. I say this with absolute certainty, because I have seen these players up close, I have been to stadiums a thousand times, and I have spoken with these players in the locker room many times.”
Pezhman rejects the idea that Team Melli is a monolithic political entity, pointing instead to internal football logic and coaching decisions as evidence that selections are performance-driven rather than ideological.
Referring to winger Mehdi Torabi, who has played over 50 times for Team Melli, but made only a single appearance as a substitute in the World Cup, Pezhman remarked, “If Iranian football were political, Ghalenoei should have put him in the starting lineup, because he is both a top-quality player and, politically speaking, the most pro-establishment, the most political, and the most religious. Yet he was not in the starting lineup; he was not even on the bench. Why? Because the coach decided that he is not needed for that match. In my view, the coach does not make politically driven decisions in his selections.”
He believes football should remain a space for spectatorship rather than political judgment. “When I sit down to watch a match, I no longer care who Mehdi Torabi supports politically. How is it possible that we applauded Mehdi Torabi for all these years and today suddenly say we are no longer going to cheer for him? Come on, Mehdi Torabi has been political from the very first day he entered football. We admired him; he has scored historic goals for Persepolis and for the national team, and every time he scores, the entire stadium rises to applaud him.”
For Pezhman, his position ultimately rests on the belief that the role of public figures at moments of political rupture is often overstated. He argues that movements tend to gain broad traction only when the risks of participation are low and the expectation of success remains high—which hardly characterizes current conditions in Iran, where reports of arrests, asset seizures, and disappearances of dissidents abound.
Pezhman said he expected more from Team Melli because, unlike previous World Cups, when national team coaches had only limited time to work with their players, this time the war led to the suspension of Iran’s domestic league. As a result, the squad was able to hold a training camp in Turkey, where they had access to good facilities and an extended opportunity to practice together.
“National team coaches always complain that they don’t have enough time to work with their players because the players are with their clubs and are only available on FIFA days. That leaves them with very little time to prepare. But this time…the national team coach had the players for nearly three months. For the first time, he had enough time, just like a club coach, to get his ideas across in training and build a well-organized team.”
He attributes the team’s disappointing World Cup campaign to the head coach’s reluctance to take risks and to the intense psychological pressure the players were under.
“Coaches have never been willing to take the risk of putting young players in the game … Even the one or two relatively younger players on the team…were not given a chance. The pressure on the players was so intense that they felt they had to prove people were wrong about them; that they were playing for the people and wanted to make them happy. They really did try, but when you’re psychologically shaken, you can’t achieve the result you’re aiming for.”
2. The Accountability Advocate: Fandom as a Social Contract
California resident Mahyar views the relationship between supporters and footballers as a reciprocal social contract. From this perspective, players owe the public, whose ticket purchases, viewership, and emotional commitment sustain their fame, income, and status, a basic level of acknowledgment and accountability.
Drawing comparisons to international figures such as British footballer Marcus Rashford, who used his platform to address public hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mahyar argues that silence in the face of widespread tragedy constitutes an abandonment of the audience. Many athletes, he notes, “raise awareness about political issues, and stand up against racism, sexism, and homophobia” because fans “don’t want to support someone who sees people suffering and ignores them.”
For Mahyar, supporters who provide the emotional and financial foundations of the sport expect some recognition when they themselves experience hardship. The demand is not that footballers become political leaders or revolutionaries, but that they acknowledge the suffering of the people who have supported them.
“You don’t have to come out and talk about revolution. You can just acknowledge that [thousands] of your fans, football viewers, were killed,” he said. “You can raise awareness. You can talk about how a protest is an expression of opinion and people shouldn’t die because they are expressing their opinion. You can like a post on social media. There are a lot of ways you can express it. You don’t have to rile people up and get them to the streets. You can just let them know you see them and acknowledge them.”
Mahyar also argues that the national team’s roster is no longer selected strictly on merit. He points to players such as forward Ali Alipour and, from an angle very different than Pezhman’s, Mehdi Torabi, contending that they have been retained not because of their performance, which he views as underwhelming, but because of their perceived political alignment with the regime.
“Alipour shouldn’t be invited [to the national team],” he said. “He has millions of chances, but he misses way more than he scores. This is not the type of guy you want to take to the World Cup.”
Fans like Mahyar, who lived in Iran until 2016, believe they have earned the right to make such demands of their footballers. Having faithfully filled the stands despite poor infrastructure and substandard conditions, he argues that supporters have every right to expect some appreciation of their concerns from the players they helped turn into stars.
“It’s not like we have good stadiums in Iran. They are not standard, and many don’t have seats,” Mahyar said. “People literally have to sit on concrete blocks. There is no air conditioning; people are not shielded from the weather when it rains or when it is sunny and hot. So people have to endure a lot, but they do it because they care, so they expect to at least have some acknowledgment from the people they have supported and brought to fame.”
Mahyar watched Iran’s World Cup games to see what would happen but said that he resisted the urge to celebrate. “It’s one of those things. You think you don’t care, but when they score, you feel like [cheering], but you don’t.” People still want to support their team, he explained, but they want that support to be reciprocal.
He said the Iran-Egypt showdown was a fascinating viewing experience because it was a match in which the audience—at least that portion with sentiments similar to his—could find reason to cheer any outcome.
“It was one of those games where, as a spectator, it was a win-win,” as far as he was concerned. “If your team won, that’s what you would normally want as a football fan, but if your team lost, that’s also what you wanted. So it was a very interesting watch for me.”
3. The “Traitors”: Wrath Ignited by a Moral Betrayal
Some former supporters, like Tehran residents Anousheh and Miaad, have completely turned on Team Melli. They view the team members’ silence on the January protests as a profound moral betrayal, arguing that athletes who enjoyed public support as they rose from modest backgrounds have an obligation to stand with the people. From this perspective, players’ failure to acknowledge the suffering of protesters constitutes an unforgivable abandonment of their roots.
“If people had not supported them, they would not have come up,” Anousheh said. “If they had gone to play football and the stadiums had been empty, they would not have had the motivation to come and play. If society had not acknowledged them, they would not have been able to get sponsorships. In other words, everything they have is due to the love that people have given them, and their duty is to support the people and stand with them.”
Anousheh expresses particular disdain for what she perceives as the opportunism and “nouveau riche” attitudes of figures such as coach Ghalenoei, whom she criticizes for alignment with the regime and tasteless displays of wealth. She and Miaad contrast such figures with “angelic” athletes like Olympic wrestling champion Rasoul Khadem, who used his own money to establish a charity that provides assistance to underprivileged communities and operates care homes for orphaned and neglected children, while frequently spearheading efforts to aid natural disaster victims, and Ali Karimi, one of the most honored Asian footballers of all time, who faced professional repercussions for wearing a green wristband during a match in symbolic support of the 2009–10 Green Movement.
For Iranians like Anousheh and Miaad, their estrangement from Team Melli was only deepened by players’ overt hostility toward expressions of opposition to the regime, exemplified by Mohammad Mohebi, who ripped down posters of Mahsa Amini from the Manhattan Beach hotel where the team stayed before its two Los Angeles area games and performed a less-than-subtle murderous pantomime directed at a cheerless corner of the stands after he scored in the team’s opening match against New Zealand.
“In the past, when there were games with [veteran Iranian footballer] Khodadad Azizi, who is now a regime supporter, on TV, we would all watch, feel stressed, and pray for them to win,” Anousheh said. “When they scored, there would be celebrations in the streets, horns, and all of that. Now everyone dislikes them.”
For fans like Anousheh and Miaad, the joy of the game has been replaced by a desire to see the team humbled on the world stage, viewing the players’ failure as a necessary form of justice for their silence during the January protests and their continued participation in state-orchestrated narratives. These fans seek to hold the athletes accountable for what they see as a cynical appropriation of national identity to launder government violence, insisting that those who will not stand with the people deserve no support in return.
“We wanted them to lose in the worst possible way,” Anousheh said of Team Melli’s matches against New Zealand, Belgium, and Egypt. She said she doesn’t consider them Iran’s national team, but rather the “Islamic Republic’s national team,” adding: “Good players were dropped from the squad…while players who were essentially [regime] loyalists and flatterers were called up instead. These players, in one way or another, were promoting Islamic Republic propaganda. So, we generally supported whichever team was playing against Iran.”
Miaad said he did not watch any of the games and is happy that Iran was eliminated, ”We were worried Iran might win … Statistically, Iran had a very good chance of advancing, because if even one of the three key matches had produced a different result, Iran would have gone through. That was what made it so remarkable.”
Indeed, Iran’s final group stage game ended in a draw with Egypt that still gave it an excellent chance to advance. But after two matches the following day produced results that imperiled Team Melli’s odds, famed football commentator Javad Khiabani made an impassioned plea to the Algerian team in Arabic, asking them to go all out for a win against Austria—guaranteeing that Iran would join them in progressing to the round of 32—rather than settling for a draw that would allow both opponents to advance at Team Melli’s expense: “I hope we do not witness injustice. We believe in your fighting spirit, and I am sure you will take to the field to win.”
Miaad said he was delighted when he later learned that Egypt’s goal at the five-minute mark had come thanks to a shot conceded by Iranian goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand through his legs—a “nutmeg” spiced with embarrassment. “That made it even more satisfying. The day before, when Beiranvand and Amir Ghalenoei were getting off the team bus, people had approached them and asked, ‘Mr. Beiranvand, Mr. Ghalenoei, do you have anything to say about the January killings?’ They just kept their heads down and walked straight past without saying a word.”
In stark contrast, he observed, there is the case of ace forward Sardar Azmoun, who has earned 91 caps with Team Melli, featured in the last two World Cups, and commanded the second-highest transfer fee ever by an Iranian player (and, just two years ago, the fifth-highest such fee). “They say football is not political,” Miaad said, referring to IRI state media and those who echo it, but “Azmoun, who posted about the January massacre, was left out of the squad. If football is not political, then why would the order come from above to exclude him?”
Regarding the impending grand funeral ceremony for Ali Khamenei, Miadd continued, “I was also very happy that Ghalenoei and his awful team are forced to return home instead of staying in [North America] for another week. They had wanted to remain there longer and avoid attending their leader’s funeral, but now they will have to come back and attend it alongside the loudmouth arzeshis [regime loyalists].”
Miaad said he was elated to see so many people mock Shoja Khalilzadeh, as vocal an arzeshi as featured in the World Cup squad, for his untimely exertions of self-praise after an apparent last-minute goal against Egypt—a celebration that came too soon, as the seeming score was disallowed for offside. Khalilzadeh, however, was not left empty-handed: his premature exultation was so over-the-top that he was penalized with a yellow card for his pains.
“These players deserved to be humiliated and demeaned in the worst possible way,” said Anousheh.