There have in the past been casual mentions in Asian football of how Russia would be welcome in the confederation to really give the continent a sense of geographical completeness. This addition would mean a different conversation now but in the meantime if Moscow wants to see what football life can be like under sanctions then a visit to famous Asian cities such as Tehran, Pyongyang and Yangon would be timely.
The Iranian Football Federation has been wrestling with US-imposed restrictions for years, even if they are not as strict as the measures taken against Russia. Sanctions made headlines before the 2018 World Cup when Nike found itself unable to supply the team with boots, but there are more serious consequences. Swift, the financial system that enables money to move smoothly between international accounts, has been denied to Russian banks. Iran have had problems receiving their payments from Fifa and the Asian Football Confederation.
In December 2019, Iran’s sport minister, Masoud Soltanifar, blamed this for the then national team coach, Marc Wilmots, getting paid late. “Unfortunately, due to unfair sanctions, Fifa cannot pay Iran’s revenues without the permission of the US Department of the Treasury and the Iranian federation was forced to borrow money from a domestic company to pay the salary of the national team head coach,” he said. Other foreign coaches and players have left due to similar problems. Being on the international naughty step has also made it harder to attract decent international opposition to Tehran for friendlies and harder for Iran to pay for much-needed training camps overseas.
Internationally, things may not look too bad with the national team having qualified for a third World Cup in succession with games to spare but, domestically, there are major problems of which sanctions may not be the cause but do make finding solutions more difficult. The two biggest clubs in the country, debt-ridden Persepolis and Esteghlal, were thrown out of the 2022 Asian Champions League in January for both being owned by the Ministry of Youth and Sport.
There has been talk and promises of privatisation for years but there is just no money in Iranian football to attract investors even if there was the political will to relinquish control of such popular institutions. The national broadcast revenue of about £3.5m is spread across the whole league, as well as other sports. It is no surprise that club officials lament the difficulty of receiving transfer fees for players, the development of which is still a strength of Iran.
North Korea are no strangers to isolation and, as the decision to withdraw from 2022 World Cup qualification shows, have been known to sanction themselves. They have forged their own path that lies between the desire for a form of football juche, or self-sufficiency, and the recognition that there has to be at least some outside engagement.
After three defeats at the 2010 World Cup, the upper echelons of the party took a closer interest and decided that more exposure to the global game was needed. The Pyongyang International Football School was opened soon after with coaches imported from Spain. The students were hand-picked from schools around the country and those who continued to impress in the capital were sent to academies in Italy and Spain.
The best of the bunch that won the 2014 Asia Under-16 Championship was Han Kwang-song. He went on to play for Cagliari, Perugia and, for a short time, Juventus, before being sold to Al-Duhail of Qatar. The North Korean Ronaldo’s international career was derailed, however, amid reports that much of his salary was being sent back to the government in Pyongyang, in contravention of UN sanctions. The same thing ended Choe Song-hyok’s time with Fiorentina in 2016.
Myanmar do not have such problems of players earning big bucks overseas. Since last year’s military coup, there is not that much football to speak of with many players reportedly returning to their home provinces to get ready to fight the junta. Football leaders do know plenty about sanctions, with their FA chief, Zaw Zaw, specifically targeted by the European Union in the last decade. The Yangon United owner, U Tay Za, has been similarly hit, including by the UK government last September for, among other things, supplying weapons to the military. The tycoon’s bottom line has been affected, which leaves little for football.
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There were attempts to attract Chinese investment but this is a time when Beijing looks much less favourably than before on money leaving the country to line the pockets of foreign players, agents and clubs, though at least Tay Za was thankful for his Chinese-made smartphone that helped him survive a 2011 helicopter crash when he was stranded for four days at an altitude of 15,000 feet.
Russian football officials are unlikely to face such drama but, in the absence of a move to Asia, the day-to-day challenges of operating when it is hard to collect money and play games should be enough to be going on with.
