Political football

ALL EYES ON USA VS. IRAN

 LYON, France - It's political football.
 The instant this match was made there were '`oh no's'' heard all over the world.
 USA vs. Iran.
 Security will be tight. So will tensions.
 On Tuesday, Iranian exile groups opposed to the Islamic regime in Iran threatened to disrupt the game because Not Without My Daughter, a film that is culturally offensive in Iran, is to be shown tomorrow on French television.
 Thursday, U.S. President Bill Clinton said he sees Iran changing and the U.S. seeks a renewal of relations.
 FIFA, the world governing body, chose a Swiss referee for the game.
 "It's certainly no accident,'' said Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president. "Switzerland is the only country that has excellent diplomatic relations with both countries.''
 And then there's the Lyon head of press. He's Mehrdad Masoudi of Canada.
 Masoudi, too, was chosen for obvious reasons. He was born and raised in Iran. He left to go to the Mexico '86 World Cup and didn't go home. He put together the Canada-Iran game last year in Toronto.
 Masoudi left Iran because a friend of his was executed. He, himself, had been detained for investigation as a journalist for mentioning, in a statistical story, a soccer player who had been executed
 "He scored a goal,'' he said of Habib Khabiri, the 1978 Iran team captain who was executed by the Khomeini regime. "You can't change history.''
 At the time they were trying to ban soccer in Iran, and soccer has always been the passion of this young man who is living out his own dream by making it to a World Cup in an official capacity.
 "There was a time when they wanted the players to play in track suits instead of shorts so as not to arouse women,'' he insists.
 Masoudi knows there will be people in Stade Gerland today like Hassan Nayeb-Agha, a midfielder on Iran's 1978 team, now a French sportswriter.
 "It isn't possible for me to go that stadium and separate sports from politics,'' says the sportswriter. "Three members of my family were murdered. The government that killed a former captain should not be allowed to benefit from a football game.''
 Yet our man Masoudi says everybody seems to have today's game all wrong. It isn't about hate, he swears. It's a game about love of a sport which gives today's Iranians an outlet of expression they don't otherwise have.
 "Soccer is the only way of expressing themselves without any fear in the things that they say,'' says Masoudi.
 
 POWERFUL
 They can put down Mosstafa Hashemi-Taba, one of the four most powerful people in government, because his portfolio includes being minister of sport.
 The people publicly expressed outrage with a coach he hired, Masoudi explained. Then the Iranian soccer association, not the government head, was allowed to hire Brazilian Valdier Vierira, who took the team to World Cup qualification.
 He had to be fired. "He became too popular. He became a national hero,'' said Masoudi.
 So the G-man hired the next coach."People despised him because he replaced their hero,'' Masoudi explains.
 The people's outrage won again and the new guy was fired. The football association, on May 21, picked Jalal Talebi as Iran's fourth coach in the last seven months. An interesting choice especially going into this game. He has spent the last 17 years living in San Francisco.
 Talebi says this must only be a game about three points. With both teams losing their openers this now can't be about 19 years of bad blood.
 "People don't understand,'' says Masoudi. "This game isn't the climax of Iran soccer history. That was qualifying to get to the World Cup. The presence of the team, of Iran, at the World Cup is everything. To the people it means Iran is joining the world community again.''
 Masoudi swears that even an Iran win won't match the moment when the whistle went and Iran tied Australia 2-2 and won a World Cup berth.
 "For Iranians all over the world, that was a moment to remember, like where you were when they put the first man on the moon.
 '`It meant the soccer team in Iran had also overcome their own authorities. It revised a sense of pride with the people.''
 "Football in Iran is a double-edged sword. They don't know what to do with it. It has turned into a religion. There was the suggestion the other day that Iran may pull out of the World Cup because of the televising of Not Without My Daughter.
 '`They are not that stupid. That would be the only thing which could topple the Iran government in 24 hours. People would be chanting `Not Without My Football.' ''
 
 SMILES
 "The government doesn't know how to handle it. It's the first time in two decades in Iran that people on the street all smile at each other and men and women mingle with each other openly in celebrations of soccer.''
 All that said, he knows this game still stands alone of all the 64 matches of France '98. It's why he's here.