Whenever the U. Mass protests have erupted across Iran since year-old Mahsa Amini died on Sept. At least demonstrators have been killed since the protests began, including 63 children, according to the Tehran-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
Iran lost that game, With an Iran victory; Iran advances. A draw would put Iran in the Round of 16, if England beats or draws with Wales. For the U. This marks the second World Cup meeting between the U. The first, back in in France, unfolded under very different circumstances. The hostage crisis, in which Iranian students held more than 50 U.
That followed the revolution that forced longtime U. Still, there are some lessons from that first meeting that are useful for today, especially for the Americans.
Most pointedly: try to harness the longstanding geopolitical rivalry at play. Back in , Team USA went out of its way to downplay the political rivalry with Iran and embraced the strategy of just focusing on the game.
Iran then beat the U. The loss was a low-point for American soccer, which seemed on the upswing after the U. Soccer, by the organizing committee in France, to make it about football, and not about politics. Sampson notes he was a young coach—41 then—who was inclined to fall in line with institutional wishes rather than go rogue. He resigned after the World Cup, after a showing in which the U. If Sampson could do it again, he says, he would have leaned into the geopolitical rivalry—just as the Iranians did.
