"They should be told that they are not worthy of wearing the national team jersey." That was Iranian football pundit Mohammad Misaghi on state TV Thursday, and the target was Sardar Azmoun — Iran's most experienced striker and, as of this week, apparently no longer part of Team Melli's World Cup plans.
Azmoun, 31, posted a picture on Instagram of a meeting with Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. For most footballers playing club football in the UAE, that's a non-event. For an Iranian international, it landed like a grenade. Iran has launched rocket and drone attacks on the UAE in the aftermath of US and Israeli air strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the timing could not have been worse.
He deleted the post. Didn't matter. The Fars News Agency — which has close ties to the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — cited an internal source confirming he'd been expelled from the squad. An unsourced report also claimed authorities have issued an order to seize Azmoun's assets, along with those of fellow UAE-based forward Mehdi Ghayedi and former international Soroush Rafiei.
What Iran lose on the pitch
Strip away the politics for a moment and look at what this means football-wise. Azmoun has 57 goals in 91 internationals since debuting as a teenager in 2014. He's played in two World Cups and spent time at Zenit Saint Petersburg, Bayer Leverkusen, and Roma. For a nation that was already facing serious questions about whether it would even show up in North America this summer — the ongoing conflict with the US, one of the co-hosts alongside Mexico and Canada, hangs over everything — losing their sharpest attacking weapon makes qualification-group survival bets look far less appealing.
Iran's men are scheduled to play friendlies against Nigeria and Costa Rica in Turkey later this month. Whether Azmoun is anywhere near those squads looks settled. Whether Iran is anywhere near the World Cup itself is a question nobody can fully answer right now.
The Football Federation of Iran has not commented. The squad just got thinner, and the situation surrounding Team Melli darker.
