‘I’d make it more political’: when USA lost to Iran at the World Cup in 1998
Steve Sampson feels hoodwinked. The USA boss played down any rivalry with Iran before the teams met at the World Cup but, looking back on his team’s 2-1 defeat more than two decades on, he believes he was too diplomatic.
With the two teams going head-tohead at the finals again this week to decide which of them makes it out of their group, memories are naturally going back to a contest whose impact reached much further than sport. And Sampson knows where USA lost it.
“If I was to do it all over again, I’d make it more political,” says Sampson. “I would use history as motivation for my players – that they [Iran] held American citizens captive for the longest period of time and are one of the greatest enemies ever faced by the United States. I wanted to make it all about the football and depoliticise the whole event because, for me, our football was on display. Whereas for the Iranians, it was their politics on display.”
It’s a pretty explosive statement to make considering the atmosphere around the match, which the president of the US Soccer federation, Alan Rothenberg, called “the mother of all games”. Sampson believes that, while his attempt to anaesthetise any possible security issues may have been wise, it also left his side ill-prepared for a contest that was about much more than three points.
The relationship between the countries had long been fractious, but disagreements intensified when the proAmerican Shah was overthrown during the Iranian revolution of 1979. By 1998, there had been no formal diplomatic relations between the countries in nearly two decades and the US had placed Iran under a trade embargo.
“I was coming at it as an American kid who grew up in the suburbs and looked at Russia as the evil empire and the big enemy, but playing Iran in the World Cup was like that,” recalls Alexi Lalas, the former USA defender. “What they represented at that time to a twentysomething who had been growing up in the 70s in the United States … was about to play out on the football field.”
Despite the strength of feeling and pre-match rhetoric, the game passed by without any diplomatic issues. Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, had intervened at the last minute and forbidden his country’s players from moving towards the USA team and shaking their hands before kick-off, so arrangements were made for the Iran players to hand over roses instead – and the two sides also posed for a joint team photo to portray a unified message.
There were rumours that a terrorist group was planning a protest in the stands during the match, so 150 armed police were positioned around the Stade de Gerland in Lyon to stamp out trouble. TV broadcasters were also under strict instruction to ignore any signs of unrest or controversial banners around the ground.
Sampson went along with the plan to play things down while preparing his team, but that was not the case in the opposite dressing room. Iran’s players were all too aware of the importance of the match and they started ferociously, taking the lead towards the end of the first half. “I later found out that at halftime, a top politician from the Iranian government came down to the locker room and collected all the passports of the Iranians and said: ‘You lose this, you’ll never return home,’” says Sampson, who was later informed of what had happened by the Iran head coach Jalal Talebi.
“I achieved what I wanted to do – which was to make it a football event – not a political event, but the Iranians did exactly what they wanted to do. They made it a political event – so much so that, after they beat us, every single one of the players was awarded a new home in Iran, paid for by the Iranian government. That would never have happened in the United States.”
Iran doubled their lead through Mehdi Mahdavikia in the second half and, despite Brian McBride’s header halving the deficit late on, Iran held strong to win 2-1. Cue wild celebrations – even though neither side qualified from the group.
Memories of the match have inevitably resurfaced before what is effectively a knockout game in Qatar. Like Sampson, Lalas believes the winning team will be the one that handles the pressure of the contest better. “Iran used the relationship, history and propaganda to motivate themselves and we didn’t match it with our performance,” he says. “From a practical perspective, this was three points. When the draw came out, we said: ‘We’re getting three points against Iran, boom, put that in the bag. If we don’t do that, there will be big problems.’ Obviously, we didn’t.”
• This is an article by Chris Evans for The Set Pieces• Chris’s new book How to Win the World Cup is out now
happen, so we stay calm. We have a plan and we’ll go out and try to execute that plan.”
So far Berhalter’s choices at central striker have been Norwich City’s Josh Sargent against Wales and the surprise roster inclusion Haji Wright, whose high-energy press of England’s back line on Friday flummoxed their effort to build out of the back.
“I think [the US strikers have] been OK,” Berhalter said, while refusing to tip his hand for Tuesday’s choice. “When we’re evaluating the performance in the first game, Josh had a good chance at the near post and, looking at the second game, Haji was very effective on the defensive end of the game, had some good runs into the channel, very lively. Perhaps there were a couple of times when we could have been more effective with the movement in the penalty box.”
Adding to the Americans’ anxiety is the fact that Iran need only a win or a draw to advance – and reach the knockout stage for the first time in six World Cup appearances – giving them an incentive to pack players behind the ball and dare the US to break them down. But Adams, for his part, doesn’t believe that’s a concern.
“After watching Iran’s last game, I would not expect them to do that because they went after the game and they were looking for three points,” Adams said. “You could tell from the mentality of the group. They were attacking, counter-attacking, doing everything they needed to do, fighting in every single duel, [making] tackles. Every single moment of the game looked like it could be their moment to score a goal.”
Asked whether he felt a win against Iran was necessary to validate the US team’s progress from their catastrophic failure to qualify for the World Cup four years ago, Adams, who is the youngest captain in Qatar, was to the point.
“We have to get out of our group by all means,” he said. “It’s good going into a game knowing there’s only one way to do it, so you’ve got to go after it. It would feel like a success for us when we make it out of the group and then continue on in the tournament.”