Iran has footballing spirit money can’t buy

The Australian – SYDNEY, “If you go to Iran, you will see football in the DNA of the people,” Iran’s coach Carlos Queiroz tells The Weekend Australian.

“They have football in the blood. The passion in the people is real. This is our strength. My players have the passion and the spirit to play the game. With the right support like the other nations have, which we do not have, we could reach fantastic levels in football. But without support, ­because of the financial problems Iran is facing with economic sanctions, it is not possible for us.”

Iran’s Asian Cup campaign starts tomorrow with a practice match at Wollongong, south of Sydney, against Iraq. Iran versus Iraq. Is this a friendly?

The far-reaching impact of UN Security Council’s sanctions against Iran for nuclear activities has triggered the slashing of funding and resources for Queiroz’s Team Melli.

“The international sanctions are a factor in sport,” he said. “They’re a factor in the football federation. If you want to play a friendly game, you don’t have money to travel, you don’t have money to buy the tickets, you don’t have money to pay the team. We come to this tournament after one game against (South) Korea in November.

“They offered to play us for free, so we took the opportunity. But in our pool in this tournament, we are competing against Bahrain, who have 12 games in the legs. We are playing Qatar, who have 15 games in the legs. UAE have 14 games in the legs from June until now. We can’t do that because we don’t have the resources and we don’t have the support. We have one game in the legs.”

Thirteen of Queiroz’s 23-man squad are from the Tehran-based Persian Gulf Pro League. It ain’t overly pro.

“Most of our players are professionals in the sense that they do receive salaries to play football,” he said.

“But you can’t compare the professionalism in Iran to the professionalism of players competing in England, Germany and Spain. It’s like day and night.

“So when you face a team with eight or nine starting players from Bundesliga, with the demands on those players for preparation and intensity and training, you cannot compare them to us.

“It’s like sometimes you can have two cars that look the same, but the power of the ­engines is completely different. Players who are used to European football are ready to play 90 minutes at one level, but other players cannot do that.”

Sport is forged on manufactured rivalries. England and New Zealand as real-life foes? Hardly. Australia and Iran after the Socceroos lost a place in the 1998 World Cup when the visitors from Tehran scored two late goals? Not exactly. Ill-feeling and bruising from cricket’s Bodyline series in the 1930s hardly compares to a million casualties during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

The fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 began a normal­isation of relations, but Queiroz conceded a deeper layer of intensity was inevitable between the Persian neighbours.

“Of course, there is still a lot of pain,” Queiroz said.

“I can still see and feel that there is a lot of pain, for sure, on both sides. When we play football, those things in the past don’t interfere in the spirit of the game. You can only try to understand that it is the past.”