it s been rather weird to see how the loose alliance of russia, china and iran have all been troubled at home recently by popular demonstrations. a general in iran admitted the other day that 300 people have been killed in the wake of the death of mahsa amini, a 22 year old woman. an underestimate, probably, but disturbing even so. and, of course, football got involved, because iran was playing at the world cup finals in qatar, playing england, wales and america, all laced with historical irony, before being knocked out the other day. bbc persian has a footballing expert, pooria jafereh. so i spoke to him about the way the world cup had impacted on his native iran. it seems like there s another competition on the sides of the world cup,
dictatorship in argentina. now, you look at all those years, you don t mention the fact that that was a fascist italy. you say those wins belong to italy, you say those wins belong to brazil, belong to argentina. but there is a big difference. there were no mobile phones, there were no smartphones, there were no social media. these players, they have millions of followers on instagram and all the social media. and for the last two or three weeks, some of them, they ve lost, like, 200,000, 300,000 followers. they could see their popularity is being reduced by the way they behave on the pitch. but then again, they re footballers. they re put there to play football. pooria jafereh of bbc persian. the chinese communist party unquestionably wants the people of china to be wealthy, and it s succeeded, amazingly, in lifting hundreds of millions of them out of poverty. but even more than that, the
1934, 1938, you have the fascist italy who won the world cup. the flag is different. you have the fascist logo in that flag. 1970, brazil, same story. there is a military dictatorship in brazil. 1978, argentina. there s another dictatorship in argentina. now, you look at all those years, you don t mention the fact that that was a fascist italy. you say those wins belong to italy, you say those wins belong to brazil, belong to argentina. but there is a big difference. there were no mobile phones, there were no smartphones, there were no social media. these players, they have millions of followers on instagram and all the social media. and for the last two or three weeks, some of them, they ve lost, like, 200,000, 300,000 followers. they could see their popularity is being reduced by the way they behave on the pitch. but then again, they re footballers. they re put there to play football. pooria jafereh of bbc persian.
expert, pooria jafereh. so i spoke to him about the way the world cup had impacted on his native iran. it seems like there s another competition on the sides of the world cup, and that is the battle for the ownership of the national team. so who does the national team belong to? does it belong to the people of iran? the government of iran or it sjust somewhere in the middle? what we are seeing at the moment is we have the protesters, who are distancing themselves from the team, many of them cheering for the opposition teams, whether it s england, wales or. that was amazing, though, wasn t it, to see iranian supporters cheering england against their own country? i never thought to see that. that is amazing. for so many football fans in iran, playing england and wales, it was a dream. they only played wales once