By Pishtaz | 2023-10-03

A soccer match between Saudi and Iranian teams was cancelled Monday (October 2) amid a dispute over a statue of former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force (IRGC-QF) Qassem Soleimani.

The match between Iran's Sepahan and Saudi Arabia's Al-Ittihad soccer clubs was set to take place in Esfahan, Iran, but was cancelled when the Saudi team walked off the field.

The AFC Champions League said the match was cancelled "due to unanticipated and unforeseen circumstances," but an official with Al-Ittihad said a dispute arose after club administrators objected to a bust of Soleimani, AFP reported.

Soleimani was instrumental in commanding IRGC-affiliated militias in the region, including the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, where they have been at war with Saudi forces.

In recent years, the Houthis have attacked Saudi oil facilities with Iran-made drones.

Al-Ittihad administrators said they had asked the Iranians to remove the Soleimani statue before going to the pre-game warm-up "and they didn't remove it."

Iran's state-owned news agency IRNA reported that Monday's match had been cancelled "according to the referee's decision," without giving a reason.

The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News said Soleimani's statue was "part of" the stadium and had no connection to the match.

Iranian conservative Jam-e-Jam daily wrote the bust had been on the field for four years.

But statues and banners depicting the slain IRGC Quds Force commander were erected after his death, mostly in 2022, and he was still alive four years ago, when the daily claims the bust was put in place.

Mohammad-Reza Saket, Sepahan's general manager, implied in an interview that the bust would have been removed if the Saudis' opposition to it had been clarified before the spectators entered the arena.

"The Al-Ittihad team's request was contrary to sports traditions and against the usual principles," he added, in what observers said was a remark made out of necessity to keep Saket out of trouble with the regime.

Soleimani reviled in Iran

More than 60,000 spectators had gathered to watch the match in Esfahan's Naghsh-e Jahan arena. When the match was cancelled, a large group of them started chanting anti-regime slogans.

They cursed regime officials; chanted, "Reza Shah, rest in peace!" and "We don't want political football!"

The Iranian public has routinely demonstrated its disdain for the banners and busts of Soleimani across the country, with anti-regime and anti-Soleimani slogans popping up on the walls near his likeness.

Iranians have torched several Soleimani statues in different parts of the country, in one instance setting fire to a six-meter statue hours after it was erected.

The majority of the Iranian public stands against the regime's interventionist and expansionist policies in the region, which is why, along with a general disdain for the IRGC, Soleimani was a hated figure among the public.

He became even more reviled after his death, when the regime began glorifying him as a hero and martyr.

Trouble for Saudi-Iran ties

The sports-related dispute comes one month after Saudi Arabia and Iran announced a "groundbreaking" deal to resume home-and-away football matches between club sides after seven years of competing in neutral venues.

That agreement stemmed from a China-brokered deal announced in March in which the two countries agreed to restore diplomatic relations and re-open their respective embassies following a seven-year hiatus.

IRNA shared footage of the newly appointed Saudi ambassador arriving at the stadium in Esfahan ahead of the Monday match.

The row comes amid a budding Riyadh-Tel Aviv normalization effort spearheaded by the United States, with recent visits by an Israeli minister to Saudi Arabia and a Saudi envoy to the West Bank.

On Friday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said a basic framework for a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia had been hammered out.

Iranian leader Ali Khamenei underscored his harsh anti-Israeli stance in a Tuesday speech.

Observers have raised concerns that Khamenei's rhetoric, coupled with the soccer pitch disagreement, may spell trouble for the newly minted ties between Tehran and Riyadh.