INGLEWOOD, Calif. — “When the ball starts rolling,” Concacaf president Victor Montaglian told a Business of Soccer conference in March, “somehow everybody forgets about everything else.”The balls have been rolling for five days now, but no one appeared remotely interested in the on-pitch action of Iran’s first World Cup match against New Zealand on Monday.At least two hours before kickoff, a large group of fans clad in T-shirts which read “Iran is our temple, we will take it back,” formed around the south side of SoFi Stadium holding placards, posters and flags.The message was abundantly clear: “This is not our team.”Los Angeles is home to 166,000 Iranian-Americans, according to the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies's Iranian Diaspora Dashboard. One area of Westwood has such a concentrated diaspora population that it is nicknamed “Tehrangeles.” Most of these individuals are descendants of the people who fled Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty and ultimately installed Ayatollah Khomeini as the supreme leader.Those that congregated for Iran’s first match of the World Cup were fiercely against the current regime and considered the national team to be at best an instrument of propaganda, if not something more serious. The players were targeted ahead of kickoff. | Sports Illustrated“These are all paid agents from the regime of Iran,” the leader of the group bellowed out of a blow horn. “These are not the real people of Iran. We are the real people of Iran.”This was a sentiment widely shared by those in attendance.“I am Iranian, but I hope New Zealand win,” Robert tells Sports Illustrated around the corner from the squall of protestors. “That team is the regime’s team.”There are flags dotted around the grounds that show a lion and a sun—flags from before the revolution which have since been banned by FIFA. The L.A. resident describes the flags as the “real” flag of Iran.However, this was a cause which contained multitudes.‘They Have No Choice’Ramin (left) was not allowed to take in his specially made flag. | Sports IllustratedOne fan, Ramin, came prepared with a pre-revolutionary flag blended into the U.S. star spangled banner. “We don’t support the team or regime. We are going to show the world exactly what is going on with Iran,” he tells Sports Illustrated. “After what happened in Iran—they are saying they killed over 40,000. My family are in Iran. The reality is they killed over 100,000 in just two nights.“We are showing the world, this regime has nothing to do with this country, our people, our history.”While he promised not to celebrate if Iran scored—“not really”—Ramin accepted that the players have been put in an exceedingly difficult position.“Most of these players, they don’t want to support the regime,” he says, “but they’re in a tough position...They have no choice.”The team has done its best to try suffocate the constant political dialogue. Iranian striker Mehdi Taremi told assembled media the day before kickoff: “We are not here to get involved in politics, we are here to play football.” Yet, that apolitical ideal was never likely to materialize.“We are done with this regime,” Ramin says, “47 years is enough. If the U.S. want to make peace, that doesn’t matter. After mass killings, we have nothing to lose.”READ THE LATEST WORLD CUP NEWS, ANALYSIS AND INSIGHT FROM SI FCAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow