INGLEWOOD, Calif. — On another day in another world, the talk Sunday afternoon might have centered on lethargic Belgium, which looked so beatable, or the heroic play of Iranian keeper Alireza Beiranvand, who made one of the saves of the tournament to help salvage a scoreless draw.
But here came Iranian coach Amir Ghalenoei to shatter the illusion that the afternoon might be about the game itself.
“We were in war conditions for six months, we didn’t have our league operating,” Ghalenoei said. “We had only one FIFA [friendly] date and it took us 40 hours to go and play a match outside of Iran. And our league was not operating and everybody knows about the visa situation, and they know what happened to us coming to the U.S.”
Just like Iran’s opening match here at the renamed Los Angeles Stadium, Ghalenoei said Iran had travel issues and was told it needed to return to its base camp in Tijuana immediately after the game instead of staying the night to recover.
(The fact that flying after the game and recovering afterward is normal practice for many teams — the USMNT, for example, did so Friday after playing in Seattle — seems not to have entered this equation.)
“We’ve only been here 16 hours and we have to fly back at 4 p.m.,” Ghalenoei said. “We don’t even have enough time to recover. And our players have needed time to recover, to be prepared, but we need to go to the airport and go back to Tijuana.”
Whoever wins a group that looks wide open right now — Iran’s last game is against Egypt, Belgium’s against New Zealand — would be a likely Round of 16 opponent for the USMNT. If it’s Iran, that would be the most geopolitically meaningful sporting event in some time.
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If anything, Iran could have been disappointed it didn’t win Sunday. Beiranvand’s save on Maxime De Cuyper in the 59th minute, getting his hand to a shot after having dived the opposite way, kept the game scoreless before Iran played the last 24 minutes up a man after Nathan Ngoy was red-carded for denying Mehdi Taremi a clear goal-scoring opportunity.
The Belgians could rightly claim to have had more opportunities — and far more possession — before then. But without star winger Jeremy Doku (respiratory infection), the Red Devils played without pace and lacked creativity.
Though Belgium will be favored to beat New Zealand and ultimately reach the knockouts, two draws from two games in what looked like a winnable group should leave the team plenty nervous.
“We should have won this match today but when there are so few matches in the group you cannot miss an opportunity and we did,” Belgium coach Rudi Garcia said. “We have to show our best football. We have a lot of work [to do].”