Iran is a sad excuse of a football team. Just to give you an example of how fucked up this team is, a player named Ali Karimi who plays in Turkey is called up to WC Squad, and started the first match. He wasn’t part of the qualifying squad and is otherwise a mediocre player. Why was he called up? Because he has the same name as another Ali Karimi who had 127 caps and is extremely popular not only for his football but for being a fierce critic of mullahs. They wanted to render possible “Ali Karimi” chants meaningless.