Iran try to play catch-up on Irish

In football some things are the same the world over.

It's 6.30 p.m. at the Al Wahda stadium in Abu Dhabi on the day before last Wednesday's Asian World Cup play-off game between the United Arab Emirates and Iran. The home side has just finished their training session and as the players wander towards the dressing-room, their coach, Tini Ruijs from the Netherlands, is embroiled in one of those great manager-versus-media exchanges with a one-man operation from the local television station.

"I didn't say that I hated all television people," says Ruijs with the slightly exasperated tone he seems to employ for all his conversation with members of the local press, "just that I hated the way that all of the television people talk about my players". It's enough to bring a lump to any homesick football journalist's throat.

Moments later the Iranians appear, to cheers from the 200 supporters that have filed into the stadium in order to watch them train. Their favourite is clearly Ali Karimi, the skilful 22-year-old whose dazzling ball control is the most entertaining aspect of his side's game. The biggest cheer, though, is reserved for Reza Chalangar, a former official at Iran's Yugoslavian embassy, who has become a cult figure since taking on the role of translator to Miroslav Blazevic so enthusiastically that he has actually managed to eclipse one of international football's most bizarre characters.

Most of the fans are having to grab this opportunity to see their players in action as tickets for the game are almost impossible for members of the 180,000-strong Iranian community in the UAE to get their hands on. The reason is obvious, Iranian officials and fans believe. The local FA, they claim, is afraid that if the game was played at a nearby ground, which is more than three times the size of the Al Wahda, and if tickets were then put on general sale, Wednesday's match would have ended up feeling more like a home game for Blazevic's side.

In the end, of course, the 17,500 tickets allocated for local fans were bought up by a sheikh and handed out for free. The 45 minutes before the game were chaotic as paramilitary police were forced to jostle with thousands of supporters, journalists and officials as they attempted to sort out who should be allowed into the ground.

Amid the chaos that both precedes and follows the match, two English students, Matthew and Andy, travelling overland from home to South Korea for next summer's finals, wander about entirely unimpeded.

The theme of their trip involves asking players, managers and officials encountered along the way to play table football with them and their hope is to sell the resulting video to a television production company in order to recoup their £15,000 outlay. Their presence, thanks to official accreditation granted to them by both of the associations involved, adds the final touch to what is already a fairly bizarre scene.

Afterwards the marketing people from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), the continent's ruling soccer body, weigh events up and reckon that the whole thing has, on balance, been a success. Things in these parts, they readily concede however, still have a little bit of catching up to do on the major footballing powerhouse of Europe.

Next week's play-off between the Republic and Iran is the result of one of the endless compromises by which the game's world governing body, FIFA, gets through its daily existence.

Aside from the two host nations, Asia will have two other representatives - China and Saudi Arabia - at next summer's World Cup finals in Japan and South Korea. The confederation wanted a third and FIFA told them that they would instead be given the chance to earn it by beating a European side.

Who could complain? UEFA was hardly in a position to concede that one of its nations might lose to what in effect would be the fifth strongest Asian team. And the AFC could say little, after having based its original claim to three representatives on the amount of progress supposedly made by teams across the continent in recent years.

By Thursday week we will know a little more about the strength of the pair's competing claims.

Those involved in the regional development of the game here (Iran) are obviously hoping that Iran will beat the Irish but there is little real belief that they can pull it off. Pierre Kakhia, the chief executive of the AFC's marketing arm, admits that for all the progress that has been made over the past eight years, a huge amount remains to be done. The Iranian Football Federation bring their players to Ireland just as the country's first ever professional league is about to get under way.

"It's good that it's happening but with the economic climate there it will do well to win the support it needs from the commercial sector," says Kakhia.

Money within the game there is tight, even at national level. State-owned television pays a fraction of what is paid in countries of comparable size - Kakhia estimates that the FAI might receive £180,000 for the rights to the Dublin game as compared with something like the £3 million the association could have expected from German television.

Attendances for the top clubs are high, the biggest games attract 100,000 supporters but, he points out, "the wealth within football is closely related to the value of ticket sales and when you are only in a position to charge perhaps one dollar for a ticket (even those for the Ireland game will sell locally for between £1.25 to £2.50), it makes life in an international sport very difficult".

The game of catch-up continues, though. Marketing initiatives across the continent have sent the AFC's revenue soaring, in large part because of their phenomenal success in Japan. South Korea and Saudi Arabia are seen as the two strongest other markets and the money raised has enabled the Asians to increase five-fold the amount of financial support they provide to local associations.

An Asian Champions League, the Super Cup, with two teams from each country, will be launched next year, and even with the poor timing of the just-ended World Cup qualifying (many group matches were played in terrible heat and humidity because of FIFA's insistence that it be in a position to make the finals draw at the start of December), the system of home and away group matches first introduced ahead of France '98 is felt to be a great success.

"You have to remember, though, that we are 44 countries and we have to help a country like Yemen as well as one like Japan. That makes the whole process very slow but in another four years' time I think our best teams will have to be in a position to compete equally with the Europeans.

"We simply must be," he adds.

Few could question the commitment of countries like the UAE and Iran to hauling themselves up through the ranks of the world game, although the pace of change elsewhere often leaves such countries having to work hard just to stand still.

Both associations have had their squads together for several months now, a fact that is, ironically, adversely affecting some players' chances of establishing themselves with major European clubs.

The UAE, where the bigger clubs can receive between £2 million and £5 million from the government, depending on how many sports they organise, gathered their players in early June for a month of training in Switzerland and France before returning home.

In all of their four months together they are released home to their families for only a couple of days a week, although UAE team manager Khalid Awadh admits that "it is only human nature" that there have been some unauthorised visits.

"Here we are certainly making progress," says Awadh. "A new board has recently been appointed to the association, they are making plans for a professional league as well as new youth structures that will help us to have a very strong team in five or 10 years. That is our plan.

"But if you look at what is going on around us the situation is less encouraging. China, who were at one time behind us, are now in front of us.

"And Japan, everybody knows how strong they are now, we used to beat them, but not anymore."

Similarly, the Iranian Football Federation was overhauled in the aftermath of France '98, and the intended improvements have recently started to become more obvious.

While the senior team ending up in the play-offs, rather than qualifying automatically, will be viewed by many in the country as a major disappointment, the fact that both their under-17 and under-20 sides were at this year's FIFA World Cups is undoubtedly a major achievement for a country where the grass roots of the game is still desperately underfunded.

For the national team, funding is rarely an issue and the recent defeat in Bahrain is actually now widely blamed on the fact that Blazevic's squad travelled a full seven days ahead of the game, after which they became bored and restless sitting around their hotel.

"Even then, the referee was a disaster, everybody saw that," says Ehsan Hosseini, an advisor to the federation. "The game against the Irish will be different," he insists.

"We have five or six players playing in Europe now and all of the others know that when they play in Dublin there will be lots of scouts looking at them.

"This is the best group of players we have ever had," he says, "they are a team of stars - like Holland - although they do not always play so well as a team.

"In Bahrain there was too much pressure but that is gone now. If anybody takes these games for granted they will pay."

The game of catch-up, our World Cup rivals hope, is about to end.

However, Ireland's own progress these past couple of years suggests they might be disappointed.