Football Soccer – Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup – Group B – Wales v Iran – Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium, Al Rayyan, Qatar – November 25, 2022 Iranian players line up during the national match pre-match REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli
AL RAYYAN, the Qatar-Iran national football team that sang while playing their national anthem in their second World Cup match against Wales on Friday refrained from doing so in their opening match on Friday. earlier this week to explicitly support the protesters back home.
Iran’s supporters heard loud jeers as the anthem played, the team singing softly as the anthem played.
Iranian authorities responded with deadly force to suppress protests that marked one of the boldest challenges to clerical rulers since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Inside the stadium before the game, some fans showed support for the protests.
A woman with dark red teary eyes holds up a soccer jersey with “Mahsa Amini – 22” printed on the back – a reference to a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who died as a result of being accused by police. Germany’s detention two months ago sparked nationwide protests, a Reuters photo shows.
A man stood next to her holding a T-shirt that read “WOMEN, LIFE, FREEDOM”, one of the main slogans of the protest.
On the eve of the World Cup, protesters took to heart clear displays of support from some of Iran’s national teams. ban singing the national anthem, such as the basketball team.
Team Melli, as the football team is known, has traditionally been of great national pride in Iran, but they found themselves caught up in politics in the run-up to the World Cup, with anticipation of whether they used the football event as a platform to stand behind the protesters.
When asked on Thursday about the unrest in his homeland, Iran national team striker Mehdi Taremi said they had come to Qatar to play football. “We’re not under pressure,” he added after the players refused to sing the national anthem during their first World Cup match against England.
Before arriving in Doha, the group met with Iran’s hardline President Ebrahim Raisi. Pictures of the players with Raisi, one of them bowing in front of him, went viral and sparked a wave of outcry on social media.
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