Iran's World Cup Adventures: A Brief History

Nobody agrees on when Iran’s National Football Team was born. Iran’s National Football Federation has said for years that the team officially formed in 1926, four years before the first World Cup. But the World Football Federation says Iran played its first international game against Afghanistan in Kabul in 1941.

No matter which version true, the birth of Iran’s National Football Team was a happy occasion. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi played a special role in training the footballers and shaping the team since the king and his family had a special affinity for football.

From the 1950s on, football clubs started appearing in Iran. They reached maturity in the 1960s and soared in the 1970s. In 1968, Iran won its first championship in the AFC Asian Cup games in Tehran with only five teams competing.

At the time, Iranian football fans had yet to think seriously about the FIFA World Cup.

 

Asia Gets into the Game

The history of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), which was founded 1904 to manage football competitions between a group of European countries, has had many twists and turns.

The World Cup was born in 1930 with only four European teams. It was only after the interruption of World War II that it started to expand.

In 1966, North Korea advanced to the World Cup held in England. In the qualifying games for the 1970 World Cup, Iran’s performance was lackluster even though, just two years earlier, in 1968, Iran had won the Asian football championship.

In 1974, Iran had its first shot at advancing to the World Cup but was stopped just one short step away. Mahmoud Bayati was the head coach of the national team. The Asian qualifying games were done in four groups and Iran competed against North Korea, Kuwait and Syria in Group 3. With four wins, one tie, and one loss, Iran advanced to the finals. In the finals, Iran had to play Australia. In the first match in Melbourne, Iran lost by three goals. But in the return game in Tehran, it won by two goals. Iran fell short of one goal it needed to advance to the World Cup.

Four years later, Heshmat Mohajerani, manager of the team, made it his mission to get Iran into the World Cup.

“We wanted to take revenge,” said the late Nasser Hejazi, the legendary goalkeeper who had been playing in Melbourne when Iran lost to Australia.

At the time, only 16 teams could compete in the World Cup, and only one team from Asia and Oceania. Iran competed against Syria and Saudi Arabia in the first round and against Australia, South Korea, Kuwait and Hong Kong in the second round. Iran beat Australia in Sydney with a goal by Hasan Roshan and in Tehran with a goal by Ghafour Jahani.

That year, with six wins, two ties, and 14 points, Iran advanced to the World Cup as the only team from Asia and Oceania.

 

The Days of Darkness

When Carlos Queiroz, the current head coach of the national team, first arrived in Tehran, he said that he was taking charge of a team that was used to missing every other World Cup. It is true that Iran had missed every other World Cup, but perhaps nobody had told Queiroz the whole story.

In September 1980, shortly after the Islamic Revolution, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran and the war that followed lasted for eight long years. Before the revolution, Kambiz Atabay, who headed both the Iranian Football Federation and the Asian Federation, was trying to convince FIFA that Iran should host the World Cup in Tehran. But after the war started, Iran withdrew from qualifying games citing the war as the reason.

Four years later, the war was still going on and Iran did not compete for the qualifying games for the 1984 World Cup in Mexico.

This long interregnum caused Iranian football to go into decline. A team that had been the Asian champion for three consecutive rounds and had advanced to the World Cup in 1978 was consigned to oblivion for 10 years. And when the team reemerged from oblivion to play in the qualifying games for the 1990 World Cup, it was the product of an unprofessional, unfocused and badly managed federation.

It did not help that when, after many years, Iran was just about to compete in the 1986 Asian Games in Seoul, 14 members of the national team resigned en masse from the team.

No wonder, then, that in the first round of the qualifying games for the 1990 World Cup, when Iran competed against China, Thailand and Bangladesh, it failed to advance to next round and was eliminated in favor of China.

Time and foresight were needed to repair Iran’s standing in Asian football. But the Iranian Football Federation decided to continue working with Ali Parvin as the manager of the national team. In the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, Iran won the championship. But in the 1992 Hiroshima games, Iran was eliminated very early on. It is no exaggeration to say that the team that was preparing to compete in the qualifying games of the 1994 World Cup was by far the worst national team in the past 50 years.

In the preliminary round, Iran was in the same group as Syria, Oman, Taiwan and Myanmar (Burma). Myanmar withdrew after the games started. The games took place in Iran and Syria. Iran advanced to the next round with three wins and three ties. In the final round in the Qatari capital of Doha, six teams competed against each other — Iran, North Korea, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Japan. Iran came fifth with two wins, three defeats and four points.

The only bright spot for that team was the discovery of Ali Daei, who was to become the captain of Iran’s National Football Team and world's all-time leading goal-scorer in men's international matches.

 

The “Golden Generation” Arrives

Two years later, Mohammad Mayeli Kohan was the manager of the Iranian team that competed for the Asian Cup in the United Arab Emirates. Ali Parvin called it the “worst team in Iranian football history” but the young team won third place in the competition. It defeated Saudi Arabia 3-0 and, in a historic upset, beat South Korea 6-2.

Kohan’s team had to satisfy Iranian fans’ 20-year old yearning for their team’s chance at the World Cup. In the preliminary qualifying games, Iran competed against Kyrgyzstan, the Maldives and Syria, advancing to the next round with five wins and one tie. These victories were so unexpected that Mostafa Hashemitaba, then the head of Physical Education Organization, wrote a book about it, entitled The Story of an Ascent.

To qualify for the World Cup, Iran needed only one win in its last game against Qatar. But it turned into one of the most disastrous nights in the history of Iranian football. Before the game, the players and the technical members of the team got into a quarrel. During the game, Karim Bagheri punched a Qatari player. Qatar defeated Iran 2-0 and ended Kohan’s career.

Valdeir Vieira, a Brazilian who had originally gone to Tehran to coach the Omid Football Team, replaced Kohan. In the first game with Vieira as head coach, Iran lost to Japan in the playoffs. Japan advanced to the World Cup for the first time, but Iran had to compete against Australia again. To satisfy its 20-year yearning, Iran needed a “Melbourne miracle.”

Asia’s quota for the 1998 World Cup in France was three teams. In the playoffs, the loser had to face Australia in two games. In the first game, with a goal scored by Khodadad Azizi, Iran tied Australia 1-1.

In the return game, Iran’s goal was first breached twice by the best Australian team football history. The team’s roster included players like Mark Bosnich, the goalkeeper for Aston Villa and later for Manchester United, Mark Viduka from the Celtic Football Club, Ned Zelić from the 1860 Munich Club, and Harry Kewell, the legendary attacker from Leeds United and Liverpool, next to Australia’s Craig Foster, Stan Lazaridis and Aurelio Vidmar.

But Iran made a comeback within three minutes when Karim Bagheri and Khodadad scored goals. Iran advanced to the World Cup. The 20-year yearning had been satisfied and for the first time since the 1979 revolution, and people poured into the streets of Tehran to celebrate. Then-President Mohammad Khatami praised the spontaneous rejoicing as a sign of people’s unity.

 

Ups and Downs Start

Iran’s failure in the qualifying games for the 2002 World Cup caught people by surprise. After qualifying for the previous World Cup, Iran had again won the Asian championship. But the in the Asian games in Lebanon, it had been eliminated after losing to South Korea.

To remedy the situation, Mohsen Safaei Farahani, then head of Iran’s Football Federation, brought in Miroslav Blažević, who had been the head coach of the Croatian team in the 1998 World Cup competitions in France. He and Branko Ivanković had succeeded in advancing Croatia to the World Cup for the first time. By defeating teams like those of Germany and Holland, Croatia came third in the games — a feat that Croatia has not accomplished again since then.

In the preliminary qualifying games, Iran was in the same group as Guam, Tajikistan and Myanmar. Iran beat Guam 19-1, and for one year was recorded as the winner with the highest number of goals in one game in FIFA’s history. Next year, however, Australia broke this record twice. First, it beat Tonga 22-0 and two days later, it won against American Samoa 31-0.

In the second round of the qualifying games, Iran was in Group A, as were Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Thailand and Iraq. Only one team from this group could advance to the World Cup. The group that came second in Group A had to face the team that came second in Group B and the winner had to play against Ireland, the last European country in the ranking.

Again, as the game against Qatar, Iran needed only one win in the final game to come first. But in the final game, this time against Bahrain, it lost. Blažević was not dismissed and Iran defeated the UAE, the team that came second in group B. Iran now had to play Ireland.

In the first game in Dublin, Iran was defeated 2-0 and in the return match won 1-0. Iranian football still remembers the failed dribbles of Ali Karimi, the tears shed by Yahya Golmohammadi and the benches set on fire by the spectators at the return game against Ireland.

The loss to Ireland marked the beginning of the professional life of Branko Ivanković in Iranian football. First, as the head coach, he made the Omid Football Team the champion at the 2002 games in Busan, South Korea. Then, with his coaching, Iran once again won the third place at Asian games. In 2006, he and the Iranian National Football Team advanced to the World Cup in Germany.

It was not a smooth advance. In the first round, Iran played against Jordan, Laos and Qatar, climbing to the second round with five wins and one defeat. In the second round, Bahrain, North Korea and Japan competed against Iran. With four wins, one tie, one defeat and 13 points, Iran came second and for the third time advanced to the World Cup.

But after the World Cup in Germany, Iranian football was hit by a political earthquake. First, Mohammad Aliabadi, head of Physical Education Organization under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dismissed Mohammad Dadkan as the president of the Football Federation. He then created a committee named “Collective Wisdom” to oversee the National Football Team and appointed Amir Ghalenoei as the head coach of the team.

In late 2006, FIFA voted to suspend Iran from its membership because of the political intervention of the government in the Football Federation’s affairs.

After defeats in the Asian games — Iran was eliminated in quarter finals by losing to South Korea — Mohammad Aliabadi forced the federation to accept Ali Daei as the head coach.

When lots were drawn to select groups for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, it was Ali Daei who drew the lot for Iran, although at the time he had yet to become the head coach and was invited to South Africa only as a football celebrity. The lottery put Iran, the UAE, Syria and Kuwait in the same group.

The first round ended with three ties, two of them on home turf. Ali Daei took control of the national team from the second game on. In the return round, Iran had three wins and advanced to the next level to compete against Saudi Arabia, UAE, North Korea and South Korea. At this stage, under Ali Daei, Iran won six points in five games. And after losing to Saudi Arabia on Iran’s home turf, Daei was fired as the head coach. Daei later said that Ahmadinejad had fired him.

It was left to Afshin Ghotbi to coach the team for the remaining games. Iran won against the UAE and tied with South Korea. If not for a goal by South Korea at the 82nd minute which tied the game, Iran would have advanced to the World Cup.

 

Enter Carlos Queiroz

These were the ups and downs that Queiroz was talking about. If Iran had not been defeated in the Asian Cup, if Iran had not been eliminated in the quarter finals by losing to South Korea, then perhaps Carlos Queiroz would have never appeared on the Iranian football scene.

Queiroz came to Iran after the twin defeats in the qualifying games for the 2010 World Cup and in the Asian Cup games of 2011. He had to select his team in three stages. The defeats and the eliminations had lowered Iran’s ranking to such a degree that, in the qualifying games for the 2014 World Cup, Iran had to fight in three stages instead of two.

First, Iran had two games against the Maldives. After winning both matches, it advanced to the second stage to compete against Qatar, Bahrain and Indonesia.

Iran advanced to the finals of the qualifying games as the top team, with three wins, three ties and 12 points. At this stage, Iran shared the group with South Korea, Uzbekistan, Qatar and Lebanon. Again, Iran came out on top of the group and with five wins, one tie and two defeats advanced to the World Cup ahead of South Korea.

This was the first time after the 1979 revolution that Iran had advanced to the World Cup as the top team. Queiroz’s performance at the World Cup solidified his standing in Iran more than ever. The elimination of Iran in the 2015 Asian Cup did not dent in his popularity. Everybody knew that Iran lost to Iraq because the referee had made mistakes.

Queiroz remained in Iran to break the spell that condemned Iran to miss every other World Cup. He also wanted to be one of the few coaches to go to the World Cup four times — once with Portugal, once with South Africa, and twice with Iran.

In the preliminary round of qualification games for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Iran was in Group 4 along with Oman, India, Turkmenistan, and Guam, and came out on top. In the second round, it shared a group, nicknamed the “Group of Life”, with Qatar, China, Uzbekistan, Syria and South Korea. The other group, nicknamed the “Group of Death”, consisted of Australia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the UAE.

The team that Carlos Queiroz built advanced to the World Cup after eight games with six wins, two ties and eight goals. Iran conceded no goals and advanced before playing the two remaining games — against South Korea and Syria.

The deciding game was the one Iran played against Uzbekistan in Tehran on Monday, June 12. Iran’s 2-0 victory, with goals by Sardar Azmoun and Mehdi Taremi, made Iran the first Asian country to advance to the World Cup. And Iran became only the second country in the world, after Brazil, to qualify for the cup in this round.

Most importantly, among all the teams in the qualifying games, Iran is now the only country that has advanced to the 2018 World Cup without conceding a single goal.