Shop with emancipation

Football is politics. It becomes evident with every major sporting event. This year, however, it can also be said that football is geopolitics. In March, the United States attacked Iran. The USA is scheduled to host the Iranian team at the upcoming World Cup, creating tension around the event. Conversely, Iranian women's football players caused a stir for the domestic regime through their silent protest in Australia. In the case of Iran, the saying about politics is even more complex — it’s not just about traditional money and influence, but about control and exploitation of women's bodies. This ultimately manifested in reactions from FIFA, the United States, and Iran.

In February 2026, the Iranian women's national football team flew to Australia for the Asian Cup. The day before the Iranian lions, as they are nicknamed at home, played their first match against South Korea, American and Israeli forces attacked Iran, killing the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and approximately 170 others, including children from the Minab girls' primary school. The players took to the field on March 2. When the Iranian anthem was played, they stood silently in line and did not sing.

This gesture, or rather its absence, triggered a series of events through which the functioning of power could be almost visually read. When football clashes with politics and the female body, illusions of neutrality disappear. Mohammad Reza Shahbazi, the moderator of Iranian state television, called the players "traitors" and called for strict punishments. "Traitors during wartime must be punished more severely," he declared. The FIFPRO, the international federation of professional footballers, called on the FIFA International Football Federation to protect the players. Meanwhile, the Iranian diaspora in Australia surrounded the hotel where the team was staying and demanded their protection.

The pressure quickly turned into a decision. Six players and one member of the organizing team requested asylum in Australia. Five of them, fearing for the safety of their loved ones in Iran and the threat of the Iranian regime seizing their property, gradually withdrew their requests and returned home. Two remained. Fatemeh Pasandideh and Atefeh Ramezanishad stated in April: "At this moment, we are primarily focused on our safety, health, and how to start rebuilding our lives. We are elite athletes, and our dream is to continue our sports careers here in Australia. But for now, we are not ready to speak publicly about our experiences."

Women's bodies outside politics

"Sport should be outside politics," declared FIFA President Gianni Infantino in April 2026. He said this in connection with the Iranian men's team, which is scheduled to participate in the World Cup in June. This year, it is held in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Two of Iran's three group matches will be played in California, the state with the largest Iranian diaspora outside Iran — and in a country that bombed Tehran a few weeks ago. A significant part of this diaspora in California supports the monarchy and identifies with Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It can be expected that they will try to bring political slogans into the stands as well.

Meanwhile, Iran requested to move the matches to Mexico. FIFA refused, citing logistical obstacles. Perhaps someone behind the scenes smiled at that.

The phrase about the apolitic nature of the sport does not sound like a description of reality but rather its framing. It sounds even more stark in light of what happened just a few weeks earlier at the Australian stadium, where Iranian female footballers stood silently in line and did not sing the anthem. This is also football. And it is precisely here that it shows how much politics it actually carries within itself.

To claim otherwise is not a neutral gesture. It is a choice, and almost always in favor of those who profit from the existing order. FIFA uses this phrase as a shield whenever human rights are discussed. By the way, FIFA has not commented on the situation of the Iranian players. It is precisely in this silence that the fundamental asymmetry of the entire story begins to take shape. Women's and men's football grow from the same root, but in the power structure surrounding them, they occupy different positions.

First, let’s look at Iran, where women can support football, play it, and watch it — but only from a distance. They are still not allowed into domestic men's league matches at stadiums. They are only granted access during international matches, and even then in a strictly limited number. During recent matches at the Azadi Stadium in Tehran, with a capacity of about eighty thousand seats, roughly three thousand seats in a separate sector were allocated for women.

Iranian anthropologist Alireza Hasanzadeh, who has studied the topic for twenty years in the field, shows that the separation of men and women in ritual spaces has pre-Islamic roots in Iran. The stadium is not perceived solely as a sports arena. It is a regulated public space, whose boundaries have long reflected the limits of what the female body is allowed to do and where it is permitted to be.

Two years after the revolution in 1979, Iranian women were completely excluded from stadiums. Hasanzadeh describes a paradox typical for the Iranian regime: women are allowed to watch football on television, participate in discussions, react to losses or wins, celebrate in the streets, but they are not allowed to be physically present. Physical presence is the problem, virtual presence is not. In other words: the state tolerates women as fans only when their bodies are under control.

In recent years, this control has begun to be circumvented. Since 2005, there have been increasing cases of women sneaking into stadiums disguised as men. The feature film Offside by prominent Iranian director Jafar Panahi from 2006 responds precisely to this phenomenon.

However, for women to watch football at stadiums, they must disappear as women. Yet, this is not an exclusively Iranian phenomenon. It is rather another variation of a broader historical pattern: England banned women's football in 1921 and only lifted the ban fifty years later; France implemented a similar ban a few years later, and its delegalization only occurred in the seventies. Brazil took similar steps only in 1979. Economist Nicolas Scelles shows that countries that previously implemented gender equality policies tend to achieve better long-term results in women's football as well. Iran, so far, is not heading down this path.

World Cup in empty gestures

Culture theorist Babak Fozúni follows this line. According to him, the Iranian state — first the Shah’s, then the Islamic — gradually domesticated football. It recognized its potential and adapted it to its needs. Football in Iran is thus not an opposition to the state but part of its power architecture. And that is precisely why it is dangerous when it spirals out of control.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative President of Iran, issued a decree in 2006 that was supposed to allow women to enter stadiums. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vetoed it, and the Revolutionary Guards protested. Football proved to be a space where political experiments quickly turn into conflict.

Nevertheless, women did not stop reacting, not through programs but through practice. Dancing in the streets, wearing jerseys, chanting in front of closed gates. But every such moment of release has its end. And afterward, control returns.

Sahar Chodajári, the "blue girl," knew this. In 2019, she disguised herself as a man and went to a stadium. She was arrested, and a prison sentence was threatened. She poured gasoline over herself in front of the court building. She died on September 9, 2019. She was twenty-nine years old. Under the pressure of her death — and also under the pressure of FIFA — Iran, in October 2019, for the first time in forty years, allowed women into stadiums. Three and a half thousand women watched a match at Azadi Stadium. One hundred fifty policewomen guarded their sector. FIFA called this progress.

But it is precisely here that it becomes clear how easily change can become part of the same system that enabled it. This mechanism is described by legal theorists Michele Krech and Joseph Weiler. According to them, FIFA represents a special form of global governance: a private organization with enormous economic power and its own rules, which operates outside standard international law and democratic control. Its statutes prohibit discrimination and claim to uphold human rights. The language is there; nothing is missing. "All the right words and statements are here to be found," Krech and Weiler write. "But if there were a World Cup in empty gestures, FIFA would be one of the favorites," they continue.

The case of the Iranian players only confirms this thesis. When they did not sing the anthem and were called traitors, FIFPRO called on FIFA to act. FIFA remained silent. The Australian government acted on its own. The diaspora organized itself independently.

FIFA only spoke when it came to the men's team. Infantino responded immediately: Iran will come, the players want to play, FIFA is building bridges. And he refused to move the matches from Los Angeles to Mexico. Logistical obstacles, it was said. But logistics is not the only variable here. Los Angeles is also a place of extraordinary commercial and symbolic significance. And it is precisely there that the bridges FIFA is building lead.

Market expansion

A similar logic can be read in the humanistic gestures accompanying the entire story. Donald Trump offered Iranian female footballers in Australia, threatened by sanctions at home, asylum in the United States. The same Trump who deported Iranian refugees back to Iran a few months earlier. Australian Prime Minister Albanese emphasized the independence of his action. Reza Pahlavi thanked Trump. Each of these steps had its own address and context. Assistance is often visible where it can be politically or media-wise exploited.

Culture theorist Fozúni adds another dimension to this. Iranian feminism is not monolithic. Besides visible activists, there are thousands of women acting differently — without media, without support, without guarantees. Saving a few players is thus not only a story of help but also a matter of choice: who is the help intended for and who remains outside the focus.

It is precisely at this point that the abstract structure of power returns to individual lives. Brisbane Roar offered Pasandideh and Ramezanishad training. Then it started forwarding journalistic inquiries to a PR agency. The gesture was friendly but also revealed the limits of institutional support.

Both players have been in Brisbane since March. In April, they issued a statement. They thank, ask for privacy, and postpone their testimonies indefinitely. Their former captain Zahra Ghanbari returned to Iran, was welcomed as a heroine, then had her assets frozen, and after issuing a "statement of innocence," they were unfrozen again. Neither return nor departure represented a definitive solution for the players. Both options have their specific power conditions. Football may represent emancipation for them, but it also keeps them in an in-between space of not entirely free possibilities.

This in-between space is not only the personal experience of a few players. It is part of a broader development of women's football. Today, it is presented as an emancipation project, and to some extent, it is. But at the same time, it is growing within institutions that are beginning to exploit it.

FIFA expanded the Women's World Cup to thirty-two teams. This step was presented as a breakthrough. However, economist Nicolas Scelles shows that it was also about market expansion and strengthening support within the organization. The commercial value of women's football is increasing — and with it, the interest of institutions.

And with this interest comes a risk that Krech and Weiler describe as co-optation. Feminist demands are adopted and used to reinforce existing power. Women's football becomes proof of equality, modernity, and values. The players remain its visible face but not its authors.

Meanwhile, Infantino continues to build bridges. Across Los Angeles, across big money, across anthems sung and not sung.

So the question is not whether football belongs to politics. We already know that. The question is different: whose politics wins in it and whose bodies pay the price.

The author is a publicist.

We present this text in cooperation with the Czech literary monthly Host