The disciplinary record of Iran both on and off the field is raising alarm in the final stages of qualification for the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia. Iran has a golden opportunity to make it to the finals back to back for the first time in its history. Team Melli is comfortably leading the group with 17 points , 4 clear points ahead of second placed rival South Korea. Each team has 3 games to go.
However, some serious breaches could risk this historical achievement. Team Melli has one of the highest numbers of yellow cards amongst the 12 teams in the final round (Round 3) of the Asian Zone qualifiers. But it is off the field that the real danger looms. Crowd disturbance and misbehavior, albeit on small scale, has not only damaged the coffers of the Iranian football federation to amount of 138,000 Swiss francs already, the continuation of such disorder might lead to much serious disciplinary actions such as points deduction or banning home games being played in Tehran.
The fracas and ill disciplinary in Team Melli actually started from one Javad Nekounam who was at the time, the assistant coach. It was against Qatar in the first match of the 3rd round. It cost Iran several bans including Nekounam himself and a 40,000 Swiss francs fine.
There was many other fines and threats by FIFA after that match but the most serious was in the last game against China in Azadi Stadium , when a fire cracker thrown at the linesman , nearly reached at a stage where the match would have been abandoned by the referee. Luckily , the shocked linesman continued the match and was not physically hurt.
FFIRI should consider itself lucky that FIFA only slammed a 50.000 Swiss Francs fine because of unsportsmanlike and dangerous conduct by the fans during the game, and did not take more serious action.
Azadi Stadium is fully government own stadia and is policed by the government security forces who seem to body check every fan entering the 100,000 capacity showpiece of Iranian football. However, throwing fireworks, objects and large stones at opposing teams in Iran and particularly Azadi Stadium, is quite common and continues despite the supposedly strict security checks!.
Despite decades of crowd ill-disciplined and treacherous acts, the Security forces in and out of the stadium have not been able to prevent it happening over and over again. It is has been known that security guards confiscate fan’s cameras yet lit in fireworks and pyrotechnics by others!!!
For its incompetence, this security force unit gets a lot of propaganda and praise particularly from TV match commentators who always seem to praise the security. It certainly seems like it is a choreographed act and the commentators are forced to mention it. in reality, there is quite a bit of incompetence and failures by the all concerned and especially the security forces which might end up dearly for Iranian football.