The Galaxy to do Battle with the Axis of Evil?

By: Laurie | April 30th, 2008

Do we want to paint this in deep, dark philosophical terms, or is it just another high-profile Galaxy friendly?

Whatever. Our boys are apparently going to play Iran in May. (Despite previous Galaxy front office protestations to the contrary.)

Iran. You know. The country that won’t let women come to their home games? Yeah, that Iran. (Is this still the law? It was, then it wasn’t, but now I think it is again.)

I’ll let Andrea Canales tell you all about the game itself in her ESPNsoccernet article, including some interesting bits about the Iranian community in LA and how its history intertwines with that of the Galaxy, and about the whole “soccer diplomacy” thing.

For my part, I’d like to give you what I thought were some fascinating links I stumbled across when I was researching news about Iran’s coach search. (As of a month ago, they were in the middle of managerial musical chairs. It’s apparently not quite resolved.)

But while I was looking into that, I found a fascinating page called Iran Sports Press, which pulls no punches in its criticism of the Iranian sports hierarchy. (And remember here that Iran doesn’t exactly have free press. And also that Iran recently faced FIFA sanctions for political meddling in football.) My guess is that this site is run by Iranian ex-pats, but I’m not certain of this.

TEHRAN- Iran’s coach Ali Daei launched a furious tirade against his football federation on Tuesday, threatening to quit and revealing he is still waiting for a contract to sign.

Daei, the holder of the world record for international goals, was appointed in March to reverse the flagging fortunes of the Team Melli in its World Cup campaign. However with crunch qualifying matches approaching in June, it appears that relations between the ex-Bayern Munich striker Daei and federation head Ali Kafashian have reached an all time low.

“If Kafashian does not have time to talk with me about friendly matches and my contract, then I am not free either,” Daei told the Hamshahri newspaper. “I have not won my honour so easily that I can lose it this way. If things go on like this, we should think about something else and they could appoint someone else who they like.”

Also on the same site, I found this description of challenges facing the Iranian game:

Clemente [Former coach, who was fired before taking the job] is being handed a shattered National team, who have not trained together for more than a week in the last 6 months, half of the foreign based players are regular benchwarmers, players are psychologically frustrated at the shortcomings in Iranian football state in the past year or so, and the team is under pressure of expectations to smoothly qualify for World Cup 2010.

Works for me. If we’re going to turn our boys loose against the best team another nation has to offer, let’s at least make it a dysfunctional one.