Factors Weighing Against Iran in the World Cup

This article is part of a 22-part miniseries on the history and stars of Iranian football released ahead of Iran's participation in Group B of the 2022 Qatar World Cup in November. You can explore the rest of the series here.

For the past few years Iran's national football team has been celebrated at home for the "unity” displayed by its players, in terms of both working in technical harmony and their cohesion as a group. Images of Team Melli celebrating after every goal, through the Carlos Queiroz years from 2011 to 2019 and since the pandemic under Dragan Skočić, have dominated media coverage after each and every game.

The run-up to the World Cup, however, has been chaotic. Players have been publicly divided over whether or not Skočić should be retained until November, and former stars in Iranian football have weighed in as well.

Mehdi Taremi, Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Saman Qodous are some of the most important players on the national team, and all of them voiced opposition to the Croatian coach’s continued tenure. Taremi in particular was vocal on Instagram about wanting to see Skočić replaced, to the point of petitioning the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, about it.

Taremi is the team’s highest scorer and best striker. But other high-performing players, including Sardar Azmoun and Alireza Beiranvand, backed Skočić, creating division within the ranks. It seems likely that Carlos Queiroz will choose to retain both for the World Cup, and fans can only hope that he and the two camps of players will be able to bury the hatched in time. 

This stormy period, though, may have demoralized players ahead of one of the most important contests of their lives. At the height of the controversy, some leapt in to defend each other on national TV: Sardar Azmoun, for instance, had to insist to the IRIB that Mehdi Taremi was “a man of honor”.

Worse still for morale, there has been some speculation in Iranian media that Skočić opponents on the team deliberately underperformed in a July friendly match between Iran and Morocco, causing the latter to win, just so as to set up a debate over Skočić’s future.

Recent, major changes at the top might also drastically alter the team’s fortunes in weeks to come. In February 2022, the president of the Iranian Football Federation was dismissed on the decision of the board of directors. Three other board members were also thrown out, followed by the Federation’s vice president for women’s affairs, who was arrested by security forces in connection with cryptocurrency fraud.

Mirshad Majdi took up the mantle of interim head of the Federation but for months, the board has been unable to reach a quorum on pivotal matters. This in turn created turbulence and a general loss of direction for the national team.

Finally on August 30, Mehdi Taj - a deeply controversial figure associated in Iran with grift and wasting millions of euros' worth of Federation cash - was voted back in as president of the Federation. Not one week later, he made good on his promise to bring Carlos Queiroz back to Iran. 

The Portuguese coach knows Team Melli well and has reportedly been following their performance in recent matches. He also has previous experience at the World Cup with Portugal, South Africa and Iran.

However, his past few years as a coach since leaving Team Melli have been more lackluster. Under his leadership, the Colombian team was knocked out of the Copa America and the World Cup qualifiers after a 3-0 loss to Uruguay, and Egypt lost out on the African Cup and the World Cup. He has been a capable coach, but his choice to come back to Team Melli might in part be read as a bid to restore his own credibility.

Will he succeed, and will Team Melli be able to get past the chaos of the past seven months in time to shine in Qatar? Watch this space.