By Paul Nicholson
April 14 – Iran have made another trip to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), this time to protest the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) decision to award hosting rights for the centralised preliminary rounds of World Cup qualifiers to Bahrain.
The AFC has centralised all the preliminary group round Asian qualifiers matches after a covid-hit year in which just three qualifying games have been played across all eight groups. Groups will be played May 31 to June 15.
Iran currently lie third in Group C, five points behind group leaders Iraq and three behind second-placed Bahrain, but with a game in hand and six left to play.
The Iranians, who have already lost away games to Iraq and Bahrain, claim that centralising in Bahrain gives the Bahrainis an unfair advantage. At this stage of World Cup 2022 qualifying only group winners are guaranteed to go through to the final group qualifying, with the other five slots going to the best placed group runners up.
The Iranians claim that they should be hosting the group and that the AFC made the decision to go to Bahrain under pressure from AFC president, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, who is from Bahrain. It is a claim the Iranians can’t back up with evidence but is nevertheless symptomatic of the too frequent political distrust within Iran, and towards the country.
The decision by the AFC to go to Bahrain was made on the hosting criteria the AFC has had for competitions during the pandemic. At the top of that list is whether the travelling players and staff will be safe.
Iran, with many cities locked down and no proper count of the number of covid-19 cases or deaths, has no real information on the status It also struggles with its medical infrastructure with reports that many hospitals are overwhelmed with covid cases.
There is also the issue that countries are reluctant to play in Iran, not just for health reasons, but also because of the danger of economic sanctions that could result. This is particularly an issue for national broadcasters who want to air the matches but would not be able to pay for the broadcast because of fears of wider national trade implications.
On these criteria, ruling out Iran for hosting was a fairly logical and simple decision.
Nevertheless, the Iranians, who have a proud World Cup and regional playing record are claiming that the AFC broke its own rules in that the decision to host in Bahrain was not made by the Competitions Committee, even if it did follow the AFC’s current hosting criteria.
The Iranians claim that they are disadvantaged by having to play a second away game against Bahrain in conditions that their players are not acclimatised to.
Iranian teams are no strangers to having to play away from home – either for political or covid reasons. The recent qualifiers for the Asian Champions League saw Iran’s Foolad Khouzestan FC beat the UAE’s Al Ain 4-0 on April 10 in a Champions League group play off spot. That match was played without complaint in Saudi Arabia, a country that geo-politically Iran is in bitter dispute with.
Foulad Khouzestan are back in Saudi this week, as are Iran’s Esteghal, for the group stages of the AFC Champions League. Bost clubs are in groups with Saudi opposition. No CAS complaint was filed over the scheduling of these fixtures and venues.
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