Mohammad Dadkan, the former president of the Football Federation of Iran, said something in an interview with the Rouydad24 website that perhaps explains the current state of the Islamic Republic's national team better than any other football analysis: "The federation's entire effort is to get the qualification prize money and divide it among themselves; nobody's heart bleeds for the homeland."
These days, when the Islamic Republic's football federation is in intensive consultations with FIFA and the US embassy to obtain visas for players, managers, and the national team's entourage, the question is being raised more than ever: What exactly is the Islamic Republic fighting for?
For national prestige? For footballing success? Or for executing a propaganda project on American soil? Or for the tens of millions of dollars in revenue that FIFA pays to teams participating in the World Cup?
In past years, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly tried to turn the football team's presence in international events such as the World Cup or the AFC Asian Cup into a propaganda tool, from dispatching state-sponsored spectators to fill the stands to the political exploitation of sporting successes in official media.
