{"id":163122,"date":"2026-06-16T16:12:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T16:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/163122\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T16:12:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T16:12:17","slug":"he-lost-his-father-to-irans-regime-at-world-cup-he-cheered-for-team-melli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/163122\/","title":{"rendered":"He lost his father to Iran\u2019s regime. At World Cup, he cheered for Team Melli"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Unprecedented sports feats and historical firsts are usually joyous affairs. Something to celebrate, fun trivia to tuck away for later.<\/p>\n

On Monday in Inglewood, the history was much more fraught, and not at all trivial.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s national soccer team<\/a> played on American soil \u2014 this time on SoFi Stadium\u2019s natural turf \u2014 for the first time in 26 years. And for the first time, a country hosted a World Cup<\/a> participant with which it is mired in an on-again, off-again war.<\/p>\n

There was, in the days and hours leading up to the match, protest and pushback from portions of the large, local Iranian diaspora who didn\u2019t think it was possible to support the country\u2019s football team without supporting the oppressive regime.<\/p>\n

But inside SoFi Stadium, thousands of L.A.\u2019s Iranian supporters gave the team its full-throated support. So did many new Mexican fans who\u2019ve adopted Team Melli, which has been staying and training in Tijuana between matches as it was barred from the United States except for game days.<\/p>\n

Most of the near-sellout crowd of 70,108 were there cheering Iran, helping propel this team under so much pressure to an entertaining 2-2 tie<\/a> with New Zealand.<\/p>\n

And there, among the thousands of enthusiastic Iran supporters swept up in the match, was my son\u2019s favorite soccer coach, Narb\u00e9 Mansourian, with his son, 13-year-old Daniel.<\/p>\n

Narb\u00e9\u2019s brother got his hands on a pair of nosebleed tickets and immediately handed them over to his soccer-loving relatives.<\/p>\n

And Narb\u00e9 \u2014 a 5th- and 6th-grade social studies teacher in Hollywood \u2014 had no qualms about backing these Iranian men. There were no second thoughts about separating the players from the politics in the country with the complicated geopolitical \u2014 and personal \u2014 history.<\/p>\n

Now, know this: Mansourian is no fan of Iran\u2019s Islamic regime. He was 7 in 1983 when his father, a political dissident, was executed in Evin Prison<\/a>, nine months after he\u2019d been apprehended.<\/p>\n

Narb\u00e9 remembers visiting his dad, Vazgen, at the notorious prison. He remembers the long drive to get there, the long wait to see him and the game he and his mom used to play: \u201cToday you are 4 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Narb\u00e9 <\/p>\n

Narb\u00e9 Mansourian, right, and his son Daniel before Monday\u2019s World Cup match between Iran and New Zealand at Sofi Stadium.<\/p>\n

(Mirjam Swanson \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

What started as a way to avoid paying bus fares for 6-year-old Narb\u00e9 became the way to fool guards at prison, where only the small children were allowed to physically touch their imprisoned loved ones.<\/p>\n

He remembers being allowed behind the glass, where he\u2019d wait for his dad to emerge, blind-folded.<\/p>\n

When his dad was killed at 37, Narb\u00e9 said his mother didn\u2019t immediately find out. And when she did, she initially told Narb\u00e9 that he\u2019d been sick. There was no funeral and when they went to visit his father\u2019s grave, they found a dirt field. There were no markers, Narb\u00e9 recalls.<\/p>\n

He has kept Vazgen\u2019s coke-bottle glasses, his watch and the still-intact little LEGO house they built together before his dad was taken to prison.<\/p>\n

Narb\u00e9 has held onto so many difficult memories, including the nighttime terrors associated with bombings during the Iran-Iraq war. But there are also happier recollections. Like the stories he would make up about good guys going against the greedy. And, yes, memories of going to soccer games with his dad.<\/p>\n

So, \u201cabsolutely, I\u2019m going to root for the Iranian national team,\u201d Narb\u00e9 said before Monday\u2019s match, saying that, to him, equating the Iranian national team with the country\u2019s regime is like rooting against the Knicks because you don\u2019t like President Donald Trump, a native New Yorker.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like a cartoon good guy, bad guy,\u201d Narb\u00e9 said. \u201cThere\u2019s so much gray. Because they live there. My heart goes out to them. It can\u2019t be easy, to kind of teeter-totter like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A pre-revolutionary Iranian flag is displayed before the World Cup group stage match between Iran and New Zealand at SoFi Stadium.<\/p>\n

(Allen J. Schaben \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

I should\u2019ve expected this outstanding youth soccer coach would be most concerned with the players on the pitch.<\/p>\n

Some fans got into SoFi on Monday with the Iranian Lion and Sun flag, a historic Iranian national and opposition flag that was banned from the stadium because FIFA desires to steer free of politics (unless it\u2019s steering straight into them). It was a strange sight in Los Angeles, seeing stadium workers asking attendees to discard flags in an effort to censor the expression of people here.<\/p>\n

Some of those fans turned their backs during the national anthem, which many in the stands jeered at its start. But then, once the game took hold, so did the support.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were many Iranians here,\u201d Coach Amir Ghalenoei said through an interpreter. \u201cThey believe in different political affiliations, different beliefs, but they all wholeheartedly encouraged us, and I think that\u2019s a victory for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unprecedented sports feats and historical firsts are usually joyous affairs. Something to celebrate, fun trivia to tuck away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[1555,51247,10875,48956,6592,20308,34,51246,681,51245,2967,48291,27002,2968,2259],"class_list":["post-163122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-country","tag-dad","tag-evin-prison","tag-fan","tag-father","tag-football-team","tag-iran","tag-match","tag-monday","tag-narbe","tag-regime","tag-sofi-stadium","tag-team-melli","tag-thousand","tag-time"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116760670491339228","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}