As the World Cup comes to a close and the impending battle between the two remaining heavyweights dominates the global consciousness, some of the stories from earlier on in the event are slowly being forgotten. Among them is the story of Iran’s national team, commonly known as Team Melli.
Iran’s story in this World Cup was in many ways very familiar. This isn’t the first time the team held its own against a European giant in the group stage before missing the knockout round by the most painfully thin of margins. But despite the familiarities on the field, there was something quite different about the discourse surrounding the team this year. As the Islamic Republic has become increasingly repressive, cracking down on any form of dissent among the members of a team that once openly protested the regime, many spectators have now turned their backs on Team Melli, viewing them as an extension of the government. What I learned as I watched the team this year has instead helped me come to the unsteady conclusion that supporting the team is still okay, as long as it’s done correctly.
When it came time for Iran’s first match, I cautiously watched at home, the association between the team and the regime having dampened my support from previous years. I was not as bothered when New Zealand scored, and I was not as overjoyed when Iran scored back. But by the end of the game, the powerful, growing desire to just throw my support behind my country’s team was causing me to feel a little guilt. Hearing the stadium in Los Angeles roar every time Iran went on a run did help validate those feelings.
For the second match, I went to a public venue and, to my surprise, found many other Iranian Americans there, dressed in red, white and green and ready to support their country without reservation. This time, I didn’t hold back. I leaped out of my seat along with the rest of the crowd during the big moments for Iran.
This experience was what ultimately helped reassure me that Team Melli can still be the team of the people.
The concern about supporting Team Melli of course comes from the belief that the team represents the regime and its interests, and that supporting the team would in turn be indirectly harmful to everyone suffering under the regime. But whether Team Melli represents the regime has nothing to do with the extent to which the regime has attempted to brand the team as an extension of itself. Whether Team Melli represents the regime at first comes down to one thing: what the players themselves believe, and what beliefs they choose to represent publicly.
We derive the meaning we assign to social organizations from an implicit understanding that the actors within those organizations hold certain beliefs. We may judge a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi based solely on the fact that they associate themselves with neo-Nazism, without looking further into their character, because we know that someone would associate themselves with neo-Nazism only if they held certain atrocious beliefs.
Can we judge Team Melli as a whole using the same logic? Some would argue so, since the regime has become so repressive that to even make it onto the national squad these days supposedly requires at least implicit support for the Islamic Republic. I’d argue the picture is a little more complicated. Star player Mehdi Taremi, for example, has a complicated history of political statements. While he was a more vocal supporter of the regime in the past, he has more recently expressed concern for the conditions of the Iranian people. Many of the players have also avoided representing any political beliefs at all during the tournament, repeatedly stating in interviews that they wish to talk football and not politics.
For some, and probably especially for the Iranian diaspora that resides in freer countries, these inconsistent statements of support or political neutrality aren’t enough to prove that the players don’t support the regime. When someone has a far-reaching platform, we seem to lend them a greater responsibility to speak up for the right things or otherwise deem them complicit. This may be a valid way of thinking about celebrities in free countries, but in a country like Iran, the effect of stardom is reversed. Stardom increases scrutiny from the government and thus lowers the threshold for players to express their true beliefs, lest they put their livelihoods at risk.
In this absence of a clear set of united beliefs and actions to act as a signal for what we should think of Team Melli, what the team represents becomes socially constructed. We the people have the power to choose what meaning we associate with the team, and thus we have the power to choose whether supporting the team is harmful.
This is why the collective support I found during this World Cup was so powerful. I found members of my community supporting the Iranian team as a symbol of the country and its people, and, perhaps most importantly, making an important political distinction while doing so: There were Lion-and-Sun flags on people’s backs and in the air, and while I have strong reservations about using that flag as a symbol of opposition, the use of the symbol was clearly a good-faith attempt to go beyond just accepting Team Melli as a neutral representation of the people and instead co-opt them as a symbol of resistance. Seeing that this was what the team still meant to those around me, I felt far more comfortable in supporting them as I always had.
Now, this doesn’t mean that constructing Team Melli as a symbol of the opposition is a straightforward process. Opposition means something different for different members of the Iranian community; many of the Iranian Americans who brought their Lion-and-Sun flags to Team Melli’s matches likely did so out of nostalgia for a monarchy that is still remembered by many of those in Iran as repressive. There is no specific faction of the opposition that is entitled to claim Team Melli. Instead, we should try to construct Team Melli as a broader symbol of opposition through protest that focuses on opposing the current regime or using neutral symbols such as the simple tri-color flag.
For the people to unite around Team Melli in such a way is exactly what the regime fears, which is why it has tried and will continue to try everything it can to construct Team Melli as a symbol of Islamic Republic. So for now, I’m still going to be cheering for Iran the next time they win on the global stage — because we the people can decide that that’s our victory to share, and in that shared victory there might just be an opportunity for change.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
