The team’s coach also felt the need to recruit players to the team by scouring the globe for highly skilled players of Iranian descent, even if they did not and never had lived in Iran. This says something about the difficult situation facing the Iranian soccer team, but it also says something about the difficult situation facing its people, many of whom fled their homeland in recent years and decades to maintain a chance at freedom.

The project of looking throughout the world for Iranians is perhaps unintentionally symbolic. It reflects the fact that the voice of the Iranian people does not speak from under the veil of the Iranian government. It shows that the true identity of those people is hidden and must be rediscovered when the nation has a chance at victory.