Soccer more than just a game
For the non aficionados in Europe the World Cup offers the occasion to rediscover city streets without the crowds while most of the masses are at home glued to their television sets for the near month of the Cup’s duration. However, the lot that pared off Iran with the US caught the interest of even the most resistant and reticent of the die-hards of non-participation in the soccer insanity.
This occasion for two nations who have been hostile to each other like few others to play out their differences on a soccer field was seen as a "cosmic joke’ by the New York Times. Others named it "the justice of God," while Secretary of State Madeline Albright called it an "historic opportunity for peace."
This is not the first time that sports and politics have joined together to offer the world an historic moment. In 1971, the world witnessed another clamorous sporting event of political import. The adversaries then were the US and China. The site was Japan instead of France, and the battlefield was a ping pong table rather than a soccer stadium. China then, like Iran today, was just coming out of a long period of revolutionary isolation.
Not surprisingly, in the US the only channel showing all of the World Cup games is the Spanish station Univision, although ABC did buy the rights to the games in which the US was participant.
For non soccer fan viewers, the most important moments of the Iran/US encounter were perhaps those before the game when the players shook hands, exchanged momentos, and listened respectfully to each other’s national anthems. Irony would have it that that was the precise moment when the Italian state-run Rai television network decided to run its commercials. So those who were witnessing the game in testimony of the historic moment had to make a quick switch to the privately-owned station Telemontecarlo. And that really meant everyone, for even those who were watching who were soccer fans knew that neither the American nor the Iranian team are exactly the best the sport has to offer.
Iranian President Khatami is encountering increasing resistance in parliament to his drive to ease the social rules imposed by Muslim fundamentalists. Only last week, the moderate interior minister, an ally of the president, was forced out by a vote of impeachment, although Khatami reponded to that by making the official a deputy president.
A month ago President Khatani expressed the will of his country to have an opening toward the West and dialogue with the American people. Just one week before the game the Clinton administration expressed similar offerings toward Iran. Last week, the players of the two national soccer teams had the opportunity to put the words of their leaders into deeds.
July 1998
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