For Iranian Americans in Conn., World Cup match can’t escape global politics
Iranian soccer is dyed into the fabric of Khalil Ghassemzadeh’s life, right down to his socks. Truly, down to his socks as a child in the Middle East nation.
“My parents couldn’t afford to buy me a real soccer ball,” the Shelton resident said to me Monday night, ahead of the United
States vs. Iran soccer match at the World Cup in Qatar that’s loaded with meaning — on and off the field. “So I was pretending to play soccer at home with my socks rolled as a ball.”
It worked. In the mid-1970s, he played for the University of Tehran team. Soon afterward, he and his then-girlfriend, now his wife, Shahrzad Parvaresh, fled the turmoil of the Iranian Revolution for graduate study at the University of Bridgeport. They planned to return home. They never did.
Both earned masters degrees in biology and both recently retired as laboratory supervisors, he at the Aquarion Water Co., she in blood testing at the Veterans Administration medical center.
Both rooted for Iran back in the last U.S.-Iran World Cup match in 1998, as the Persian side stunned its American enemy, 2-1, in France. Their three young boys cheered on the team of their home country.
On Tuesday it was a different story as the couple watched, with one of their three sons, in the packed Trinity Bar & Restaurant in New Haven.
Oh, these U.S. citizens still cherish their roots — Parvaresh, known as Shari, is president of the Foundation of Iranians of Connecticut, a cultural group. Ghassemzadeh sits on the board. But killings and human rights abuses by the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran, especially in the 2-month-old revolution unfolding there, especially with women and children as victims, have changed the picture.
“I’m very confused,” Ghassemzadeh admits. “It’s really a national pride for both countries. I’m going to watch it and not root for anyone and hope for the best team to win.”
He’s not at all confused about right and wrong. But how does that translate to a sports contest? “Being a soccer player, I prefer a good soccer game free of politics, which this game tomorrow is not.”
Parvaresh backed the U.S. squad with full fervor.
“I personally don’t root for the Iranian team at all because they abandoned people,” she said. “They are not the people’s team, they are the Ayatollah’s team.”
And it’s way bigger than soccer in her view.
“Iranian government is an oppressive regime and they are controlling these players, they are bribing them,” Parvaresh said.
She takes it personally as a woman and as the mother of three sons who have had a better life — one a pediatric cardiologist, one a pediatric dentist, one a business consultant.
We would all like to think, to dream, that even this match — especially this match — was simply about sport, the international glue of humanity. The coaches and players just want to compete in an unfettered game on the pitch, not act out roles as buff pawns in a global standoff.
On the surface it did play out as pure athletic competition with high stakes — never mind U.S. sanctions against Iran. The U.S. side had to win to advance to the elimination rounds; Iran needed a win or a tie.
Parvaresh jumped for joy as the U.S. side scored its only goal — the better to send a message to the mullahs in Iran, she exclaimed. Ghassemzedeh watched quietly. “It was a good goal,” he said.
As they both know, as the more than 3,000 Iranian-Americans in Connecticut know, this game cannot escape politics — despite Ghassemzadeh’s yearning.
They cite evidence that the Iranian government paid fans, some not even from Iran, to travel to Qatar and cheer on the team. The location in the Persian Gulf host nation slightly smaller than Connecticut carries its own political baggage, with confirmed stories of bribes for international soccer officials and deadly abuses of migrant workers who built the stadiums.
We saw the politics intensely over the last few days with the U.S. Soccer Federation defacing the Iranian flag on its social media accounts — a violation of international competition — to make a point in support of oppressed women in Iran. The government-controlled Tehran news agency responded by demanding that the international soccer governing body, FIFA, heave the Americans out of the tournament.
Ghassemzadeh criticized the flag stunt. “You’re asking for trouble. … You know the rules,” he snapped.
“But it is in support of the revolutionary people in Iran,” Parvaresh retorted.
“It shouldn’t be happening,” he said.
Wasn’t Parvaresh moved by the Iranian players refusing to sing their national anthem at their opening game against England? She agrees the players are under enormous pressure. But no, she said, the team relented ahead of the second game against Wales, and she was disappointed again Tuesday as the players sang their flag’s song.
“It would have been courageous if they had stood with the people all the way,” she said. “We have a lot of athletes in Iranian jail right now.”
The former University of Tehran track athlete then ripped into sports culture.
“We have to stop worshipping athletes. What’s important is freedom,” she told me. “We have to pay more attention to humanity than sport. You cannot feed your family with a soccer game…Soccer is only good if you have a good life so you can watch a game.”
She added, “It’s not just in Iran of course, but we have to stop on unimportant issues and concentrate on these governments, these dictators... Let’s concentrate on caring for each other.
“We have to concentrate on the crimes that Russia is doing in Ukraine. Who cares about FIFA’s soccer?”
That said, she watched the match with zeal, rooting for her adopted nation alongside the guy who has shared her life since they were both 18 and their son, Rod, a young cardiologist, who was a neutral fan Tuesday. It’s a picture of divided soccer loyalty in their household and across the Iranian diaspora, a supercharged version of what Franklin Foer described in his 2004 book, “How Soccer Explains the World,” about politics and culture wars on and off the field.
I ask how their friends in Connecticut from Iran would feel.
“I would say that they are all watching the game with sadness in mind that they cannot chant for the Iranian team,” Ghassemzadeh mused.
Some would not watch the game at all, the father and son both told me — not wanting to see either outcome.
Parvaresh exulted as the United States held on for a win, 1-0, advancing to the elimination round. “Women, Life, Freedom,” she said. “Everyone in the world is fighting. The people on the streets won.”