They should have given a Jesse James Trophy to the winner of this match. Carlos the Jackal should have refereed it, with Butch and Sundance as linesmen and Zapata running the clock.
Sunday in St. Etienne, an industrial center southwest of Lyon, they held soccer’s version of “The Outlaws.” The two countries in this one, Yugoslavia and Iran, look dirtier to much of the world than the men who work the coal mines in this region.
What more appropriate way could there have been to decide this World Cup first-round opener for both teams than a goal resulting from foul play? Yugoslavia won 1-0 on Sinisa Mihajlovic’s direct kick, which came from one of Iran’s 30 fouls, the second-highest single-game total for one team so far in the tournament.
Iran moves on next Sunday to the most politically charged match in a group littered with animosities, meeting the country its leaders call “the Great Satan.” Iran will bedevil the U.S. on the field if it plays as surprisingly well as it did against Yugoslavia. The U.S. first meets Germany, whose history makes it hard to love, in their opener Monday in Paris.
“They (the U.S.) are the only team we have a chance to beat,” said Jalal Talebi, Iran’s fourth coach in the last seven months, “and maybe they are thinking we are the only team they have a chance to beat.”
The United States government bears grudges against both. The U.S. has economic prohibitions in place against Yugoslavia, for its aggression in Bosnia and now Kosovo, and Iran, for its support of terrorism beginning with the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
And those aren’t the only political complications that have affected Group F’s teams. Under United Nations sanctions, Yugoslav teams were prohibited from playing outside their borders from mid-1992 through the end of 1994. For security reasons, Iran was not allowed to play home matches in 1986 World Cup qualifying.
The years of talent lost in the dislocations caused by the revolution and the eight-year Iran-Iraq war was the primary reason why Iran, once the strongest team in Asia, needed 20 years to get back to the World Cup after its 1978 debut.
The U.N. sanctions were the reason why talented Yugoslavia had not played in any World Cup or European championship since losing to Argentina in the 1990 World Cup quarterfinals.
Iran staggered into France having fired Tomaslav Ivic as coach last month. Afraid of being pounded by a strong Yugoslav team that routed Nigeria 3-0 in a final World Cup tuneup, the Iranians first played too tentatively Sunday. Once they saw the Yugoslavs were not going to run them off the field, Iran dominated long stretches of what may be a typically low-scoring game in Group F, which has teams whose styles could make this the Group of Boring to Death.
“Before the game, I told our players Iran was a very strong team, but nobody believed me,” said Yugoslav coach Slobodan Santrac.
Nobody who had seen Iran play any of its matches under Ivic, a Croat, would have believed Santrac’s assessment. The Iranian players chafed so completely under Ivic’s defense-oriented emphasis that they became more concerned about who was playing than how they played.
“We were going through a stretch of intensive training, and that explains our poor performances (in April and May),” said defender Mohammad Khakpour, trying not to reopen wounds. “We were quite confident we could play this way.”
With its three German-based pros–forwards Ali Daei and Khododad Azizi and midfielder Karim Bagheri–leading the way, Iran was expected to create offensive opportunities. The surprise was how few good chances the recently weak Irani defense gave the Yugoslavs, making it almost irrelevant that regular goalie Ahmad Abedzadeh was injured. His inexperienced replacement, Nima Nakisa, needed to make just one testing save.
“Of course, we had more chances to score than Yugoslavia,” Talebi said. “We didn’t lose the game. We just lost the free kick.”
Mihajlovic, a free-kick specialist, scored in the 73rd minute with one that hooked low around the defensive wall. Screened by that wall, goalie Nakisa got a late start moving toward the ball, and it beat him to the left corner.
“We didn’t have enough international experience, or else we would have won the game,” Daei said.
Daei, who will join Bayern Munich next season, was referring to games against European teams, who play the sort of physical soccer he obviously has learned after spending the last season with Armenia Bielefeld of the German Bundesliga. Daei was whistled for nine of the 30 fouls and looked more like an enforcer than an attacker. His header in the 87th minute, bobbled but saved by Yugoslav goalie Ivica Kralj, was Iran’s best scoring chance.
Yugoslavia’s offense suffered from both the lack of cohesion that long has plagued its teams and the loss of injured star forward Dejan Savicevic. Its offense bogged down to the point that Santrac replaced playmaking midfielder Dragan Stojkovic, the captain, and two other veterans in the second half with young players with little international experience.
“I must say I am not satisfied with the Yugoslav team,” Santrac said.
It isn’t pretty when your flaws are unmasked.
![Claudia Perez’s children could count on one hand the number of times they had seen their father cry. The day their mother left was one of them. Perez had worked her whole life for a dream that did not come true: Save enough money to take her family back to Mexico and live together in the town where they were all born. Instead, on a cold February day, she stepped onto a bus in Brighton Park and said goodbye, making the difficult choice between her loved ones in Mexico and her family in Chicago. “Don’t leave my love. No te […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ctc-VHR5442_183545767.jpg?w=525 "Claudia Perez’s children could count on one hand the number of times they had seen their father cry. The day their mother left was one of them. Perez had worked her whole life for a dream that did not come true: Save enough money to take her family back to Mexico and live together in the town where they were all born. Instead, on a cold February day, she stepped onto a bus in Brighton Park and said goodbye, making the difficult choice between her loved ones in Mexico and her family in Chicago. “Don’t leave my love. No te […]")
