USA v Iran: The historic 2000 friendly match planned to bring countries together
USA v Iran: The historic 2000 friendly match planned to bring countries together
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Paris, 11 July 1998. On the eve of the World Cup final, in a first-floor room in a building on the Champs-Elysees, an idea for a football friendly was hatched that would lead to death threats, an FBI decoy and the closure of American airspace.
That night, a media reception by US Soccer to promote the United States' hosting of the 1999 Women's World Cup was in full swing.
As the gentle currents of small talk circulated among suited attendees, two acquaintances were brought face to face.
Mehrdad Masoudi was an Iranian coming to the end of his time working as the Canadian Soccer Association's communications director. Hank Steinbrecher was the General-Secretary of US Soccer. In football federations and confederations, very little happens without the signature of the 'GS'.
Three weeks earlier, the two men had been in Lyon to watch Iran beat the USA 2-1. This group-stage encounter was one of the most politically charged matches in World Cup history because of the enmity between the nations.
Iran had been under US sanctions since 52 diplomats were taken hostage in the American embassy in Tehran in 1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution that toppled the pro-American Iranian monarch, the Shah.
But on the day of the match, in a US presidential address, Bill Clinton said he hoped it would be a step towards "ending the estrangement between our nations".
Meanwhile, before kick-off, the American players were showered with gifts from their opponents.
Irrespective of the result, the match had been a diplomatic triumph and the occasion was still fresh in the minds of Masoudi and Steinbrecher when they met, albeit for contrasting reasons.
"I said, 'Hank, how about repeating that?'" says Masoudi, who was well connected in Iranian football and wanted to help facilitate another match between the nations.
"Home and away games. Iran to come to the US next year, on the anniversary of this match, and you go to Iran the following year."
Steinbrecher liked the idea. And he saw another opportunity too.
"The World Cup match with Iran was the worst defeat during my tenure," he says.
"We hit the post three times. We didn't suffer from bad soccer, we suffered from bad citizenship during that tournament, so I wanted to make it right. They kicked our ass, let's go kick their ass."
There was also the optimistic hope of somehow bringing Iran and America closer through sport, as so-called ping-pong diplomacy had brought the United States and China closer in the 1970s.
With a handshake between Masoudi and Steinbrecher, the ball was rolling. Now they had to defy the political forces arrayed against them, and somehow make it roll up a mountain.
Short presentational grey line
"Fate brought the two teams together to play the France 98 match," says Masoudi.
"This time, one side had to send an invitation to the other, who had to accept, and then both sides had to deal with their governments."
The first, most sensitive and totally non-negotiable condition set by the Iranians was a waiver that would exempt the delegation from being fingerprinted and photographed on arrival in the United States.
"I have seen 80-year-old grandmothers going through that, I saw my own mother going through that," says Masoudi.
"For someone who's not used to it, it feels like they're being treated like a criminal. I said to Hank, you have to talk to the State Department and US immigration to get an exemption."
For Steinbrecher, this was the moment of realisation that an idea bounced around among canapes in Paris would have to negotiate an assault course of problems before coming to fruition in California.
"[It felt like] there was a crisis almost every hour," he recalls. "It ranged from fingerprinting their players to the mullahs saying they're not going to play the match because of alcohol advertising inside the stadium.
"There were many, many hurdles to jump through and luckily we were naive enough to think we were doing some good for mankind."
Originally, the first match was set for the summer of 1999 in Washington DC.
But the symbolism of playing in the city of the White House was too significant for the Iranian government, which did not authorise the team to travel to the United States.
Instead, the game was rescheduled for January 2000, at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in Los Angeles, home to more than 500,000 Iranians who have nicknamed it Tehrangeles. It would be the final match in a three-game tour after friendlies against Ecuador and Mexico.
But two months out, in November 1999, the fingerprinting issue had become a seemingly insurmountable crisis. Thom Meredith, who was director of events for US Soccer, called Masoudi with the news that an exemption could not be secured.
Instead, the players would be fingerprinted and photographed in a private area of the airport in Chicago.
"I said 'Thom, this is an absolute no-no,'" recalls Masoudi. "If I tell Iran they will just cancel the games right now. The contract was signed on this condition and, as an Iranian, I wouldn't even ask this.
"It would have given the people who didn't want this to happen the excuse to stop the team from travelling."
The solution lay with the US Department of State - effectively America's Foreign Office. It remained intractable, until a mysterious intervention saw the Iranians granted exemption, with just weeks to go.
"I don't know what the chain of command was at that time, but my opinion is that this went very high up [in the US administration]," says Steinbrecher, who had been so long frustrated by the apparatchiks.
"We got it done, they got it done. But they did not see things through the same prism as our federation. There were not many people in the State Department tasked with international diplomacy through sport."
However, if Steinbrecher and his colleagues thought they were through the worst, they had reckoned without the complex machinery of the Iranian government, in which the president is not the biggest component.
As the new millennium dawned, and just days before Iran were due to fly, the next political crisis was played out in Tehran.
Under pressure from his political masters to pull the trip, Iran's reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, told the president of Iran's Football Federation, Mohsen Safaei Farahani, to call it off.
"But Safaei had signed the contract and US Soccer had secured the waiver so Iran was contractually obliged to travel," says Masoudi.
"The games were against quality opposition, and they were making over $200,000 for [playing] three games. Iran had never been paid this much to play friendlies."
Safaei Farahani stood firm. It was decided: the tour would go ahead. At this point, Thom Meredith became a key figure.
"I wasn't the guy who contacted different countries and asked for friendlies," says Meredith. "I was the guy who was told, hey, we're playing the Iranians, figure it out."
Meredith travelled to Frankfurt to meet the Iranian team as it transited en route to the United States. It was there, in the transit lounge, that he came face to face with crises of his own.
"There was an Iranian player who met the team in Germany, where he played," remembers Meredith.
"He was leaving his club after this tour and he showed me his apartment key. He said, I need to return my key so I get my deposit back.
"I'm like, 'what the hell am I going to do?' I wrote on a piece of paper to the head of delegation, 'the United States Soccer Federation and Thomas P. Meredith take no responsibility for this player missing the flight.'
"He signed it, I signed it. It basically said, if he can't get back to where we're standing right now, in the transit zone, it ain't Thom's fault."
The player did make it, but then, just before boarding the flight to Chicago, Meredith was told that nearly half the delegation had flights that had not been paid for.
"It was around 3am in Chicago. Who was I going to call? If I called somebody, what were they going to do? They'd probably hang up on me anyway," says Meredith.
There was only one answer. He would have to foot the $13,000 bill himself (worth about £14,600 today), and keep the receipt somewhere very safe.
"My company credit card had a $5,000 limit. My personal credit card had a $30,000 limit. So I'm standing there, flipping the imaginary coin, thinking: 'I've got to do this, but am I going to