The Sad Saga of Iran’s Foosball Team

An Iranian citizen journalist, who writes under a pseudonym to protect his identity, wrote the following article on the ground inside Iran.

 

In April, the Iranian national foosball team flew to Hamburg to compete in the International Table Soccer Federation (ITSF) World Cup competitions. But last winter, Iran’s Table Soccer Society told the team that it could not send them to Hamburg.

Amir Ghariblou, the society’s administrator, told the team’s 24 members that neither the society, nor Iran’s Federation of Sport Association, nor the Sports Ministry would dispatch the team.

Team members say they ended up paying their own expenses.

“Each of us spent six million tomans [over $1800] from our own pockets,” says one of the young women, who was a member of the team that traveled to Hamburg. “We were not after a charter flight or five-star hotels or anything like that. We just wanted to go to the World Cup because it was different from all previous competitions.”

But the trip did not work out as planed. Iranian websites now show pictures of Iranian foosball players who were forced to sleep in a hotel lobby, in a restaurant, and on the floor of the Islamic Center of Hamburg.

 

How it All Went Wrong

The story began in the winter of 2016 when Ghariblou offered them an ultimatum: if they wanted to go to Germany, they would have to their own expenses. The amount he suggested was 6 million tomans per person. So they paid the society.

“We were sent by the society itself,” says a woman team member, who wants to remain anonymous, tells IranWire. “It is a complete lie when they say that we went to the competitions on our own initiative and that it was not approved by the Table Soccer Society or the federation.”

The players had even received permits from the Sport Ministry and its security department. The society had told them that all the money received from them would be used to pay their expenses.

But soon enough, the managers of the hotel in Hamburg where they were supposed to be staying told them that they should leave.

 

Not Even a No-Star Hotel

“There have been reports that we were in the hotel only for a day,” the team member says. “First, let me tell you that it was not really a hotel. It was not even a no-star hotel. We slept in a dormitory that we now refer to as the ‘hotel.’ But it was not one day. We were there for three days, but on the third night, hotel managers came to us and said that the money had not been deposited into their account. So we had to leave the hotel. But we had been told that if the results in Germany were good, and the team had to stay longer, the Table Soccer Society would pay some of the expenses. But that didn’t happen either.”

The team had had their IDs issued by the tournament organization. The hotel agreed to let them stay in the lobby for one night and then leave in the morning. The players had only that night to contact the Iranian consulate in Hamburg. The only result that they got was Hamburg’s Islamic Center. “We could not even go back to Iran,” she says. “The games had just started. Some of our players had not even played their first game. The only thing that we heard was to go to the Imam Ali Mosque at Hamburg’s Islamic Center. At the center, they gave us breakfast, dinner and a place to sleep.”

Of course, from what can be seen in the online photos, “a place to sleep” did not even resemble a humble dormitory. Of the 24 players on the team, nine were women. Atefeh Dehghan, Fatemeh Hasani Ghaffari, Shakiba Zaidi, Setareh Amini, Maryam Parsa, Golshan Chamani and Maryam Farazian were all members of the women’s adult team. The junior team consisted of Alnaz Aghajani and Golnoosh Chamani. Like the men, they had to sleep on chairs or in the mosque’s main chamber.

 “What was interesting was that Mr. Ghariblou did not return our phone calls,” the member of the national team says.

 

Threatened with Disciplinary Action

On Sunday, June 11, the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) published a report about the wanderings of Iran’s national foosball team in Hamburg. The report quoted Ghariblou as saying that all female members of the national team had been summoned by the society’s disciplinary committee “for reasons that I cannot divulge for the moment.” But soon this comment was removed from the website because members of the national team protested against it.

Photos of the team’s ordeal were not immediately published. “We waited to give the gentlemen a chance to at least apologize or perhaps to pay back some of the additional expenses that we had had to shoulder,” a team member says. “But nothing happened. The thing is that now the Ministry of Sports is pursuing the matter and the society wants to present us as the guilt party. So we had to publish the pictures.”

“You should grant us the right to remain anonymous,” says the member. “The only things about management that these gentlemen know are punishment, expulsion and the disciplinary committee.”

In the published pictures one can see that female players are sleeping on the floor next to tables in the Islamic Center’s restaurant.

According to ISNA, the team members’ protests have led to the firing of officials who support them.

In his latest action, Ghariblou dismissed Mansour Yazdi, the head of Isfahan’s Table Football Committee, who had defended the players and had demanded an investigation.

“The question is not only that those six million tomans have disappeared,” a member of the National Foosball Team says. “It is not even about the additional expenses that we had to pay in Hamburg. What we want to know is why, when we want to pursue the matter through the Sports Ministry, they threaten us with the disciplinary committee and the security department.”

According to some reports, the Sports Ministry had indicated to the players that it had paid the Table Soccer Society for some of the team’s travel expenses.

For the moment at least, the fate of the six million tomans that the players had paid the foosball society, along with any contribution by the Ministry of Sports, remains unknown.

What is known is that the members of the national team had to spend their own money in Hamburg, had to sleep in a hotel lobby and next to the tables in the Islamic Center’s restaurant, eat only two meals a day, and return to Iran after competing in adverse conditions.

In the end, Iran won one of the 6 cups awarded and with 3,813 points ranked 24th among the 51 contestants.

 

Pedram Ghaemi, Citizen-Journalist