These are strange times to be an Iran fan. Team Melli can bring some welcome relief
As part of our Language of Soccer World Cup series, The Athletic is speaking to supporters of all 48 nations competing at the 2026 edition to capture their unique football culture, distilled into a single phrase. You can read the articles in one place here.
Team Melli — National team
These are strange times to be an Iranian football fan.
In March 2025, Team Melli became one of the first countries to qualify for the World Cup, and the following year was spent focusing on the sort of things that fans focus on: the team, the coach, the draw, getting tickets.
Then, at the end of February 2026, the United States and Israel launched attacks on a range of targets in Iran, killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and everything changed.
Iran’s very participation in the World Cup was thrown into doubt. Assorted officials declared there was no possible way they could compete in the U.S., a country with which they were at war. President Donald Trump suggested the team should not travel for their games, due to take place in Los Angeles and Seattle, “for their own safety”. There was talk that Italy could take their place.
But FIFA’s official position was always that Team Melli — which simply means the ‘national team’ in Farsi — would play. And so, they have travelled to take part in a football tournament, despite being at war with the country hosting the vast majority of World Cup matches.
It is an extraordinary situation, and for some, it has been impossible to think about the World Cup. Even for someone like Art Eftekhari, who runs the Team Melli Talk YouTube channel, and thus has football and the national team at the forefront of his mind a lot of the time, the World Cup simply is not happening.
“When this all started, football and the World Cup were just not on my mind,” he said. “All that’s been on my mind is my family that lives in Iran, to just hope they’re OK. It hit me hard.
“Normally I’d be very pumped up, for six months or so non-stop (before the World Cup). I make content on YouTube that covers the Iran national team, and I’ve not made any recently. I just know I’m not going to be excited until I see the team training and preparing on American soil.”
Iran’s Mehdi Taremi poses with fans during a World Cup qualifier (Karim Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s similar for Samson Tamijani, who helps run the Gol Bezan podcast about Team Melli and Iranian football more generally. “As an organisation that covers the national team, we are forced to reckon with that reality, and that’s why we’ve had to refrain from being as active — in the lead-up to a World Cup of all times.”
For Ideene Dehdashti, who has travelled to the past three World Cups to support the team, a familiar sense of guilt crept into her thoughts about football and what was happening in Iran.
She remembers posting a picture online of herself smiling in 2022, shortly after the death of Mahsa Amini, whose death in Iranian police custody sparked protests across the country about the treatment of women. She was immediately upbraided by a relative: ‘How could you be smiling when girls in Iran are getting tortured?’
A similar sensation emerged when she felt any enthusiasm for this World Cup. “It’s that same feeling,” she says. “The day the war started, it’s the same thing. It’s so unfair, too, because we get no joy.”
“It’s going to be so weird for us,” adds Pedram Maleknia, an Iranian-American who has followed Team Melli since he was a boy. “We want to support the team, but then we’re also going to be watching the game and thinking about all the people that are living in Iran, that are suffering at the same time. It’s a very difficult situation.”
For Iran fans in the diaspora, following Team Melli is one of the more positive ways they can connect with and express the Iranian sides of their identity. As most people with a similar background will tell you, it can be difficult to find a sense of home: too Iranian to be American, too American to be Iranian. Team Melli is where they find a sense of belonging.
“Every single Iranian outside of the country was united by one single idea,” says Samson, “and that was the national team. You would never see any argument against rooting for the national team — if you rooted against them, it’s basically treason, no matter your political identity.”
It’s interesting to note that, when talking to Iran fans from the diaspora, they will often use the term ‘Persian’ rather than ‘Iranian’. This is partly to distance their own national identity from the current regime: the country’s full name is the Islamic Republic of Iran, and protests continue against the repressive policies of its religious leaders.
Supporting the team is a way of linking oneself to the country, to a cultural identity, but not the regime.
“The team represents a pride in your culture, not the regime,” says Pedram. “I would say supporting Team Melli is like supporting ‘past Iran’ (before the revolution in 1979), supporting Persia. If I tell people where I’m from, I might say ‘I’m Persian’. I wouldn’t necessarily say ‘I’m Iranian’.”
Iran fans watch their team play a World Cup qualifier in Qatar (Karim Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images)
U.S.-based Ideene does not necessarily follow Team Melli because of the football. She goes because it is an expression of the Iranian/Persian side of her identity. But she also goes because she can, something that is not as easy for women in Iran. Technically, women are now allowed to attend games, but they must sit in designated areas of the stadium and are only given a very small percentage of the total crowd.
And she goes for Sahar Khodayari, who in 2019 attempted to attend a game disguised as a boy. She was caught, detained for a week, then set herself on fire on the court steps in protest when faced with the prospect of a two-year jail sentence. She died a week later.
“I went to the World Cup in 2022 and I made a sign with her name on it. I got caught with it and they tried to take it away from me, but I stuck it back up my shirt and I brought it back in,” says Ideene.
“I stood in the stands holding it, and I felt so good. It feels so good to be in the stadium with everyone cheering and seeing Persians happy and smiling.
“So I go for so many reasons. I go to represent all women from Iran, to represent Sahar, and for myself to just have that fun and joy again in the stadium. It’s like no other feeling.”
When the tournament starts, the hope is that Team Melli’s games will provide some sense of joy for their fans, something that, for reasons not just related to the war, has been in short supply.
“When Iran beat the USA in 1998, it was like winning the entire World Cup,” says Ideene. “It was pure bliss — that feeling was everything. I truly hope that energy is brought back to us this year. We really need it. And deserve it.”
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