Iran’s Karim Ansarifard and Alireza Jahanbakhsh had strong words for Nike following their team’s 1-0 win against Morocco to open the World Cup.
The shoe company withdrew the squad’s supply of boots earlier this week due to global economic sanctions against the Asian country ahead of the tournament in Russia.
“What Nike did to us was very wrong,” Ansarifard said after the match: “I don’t want to comment too much on it. But I can tell you, as a footballer, we don’t compare diplomatic and political problems to sports.”
Iran won their group opener after Morocco’s Aziz Bouhaddouz scored an own goal in second-half stoppage time to give Carlos Queiroz’s team the three points and top spot in Group B thanks to a draw later on Friday between Spain and Portugal.
The team’s star winger Alireza Jahanbakhsh went further in his criticism of the American brand, saying: “To be honest we didn’t care actually. What they have done is a little bit disrespectful.
“In my opinion — and we spoke with the other players in the team as we had a meeting about this — politics has nothing to do with sport and with football, such a beautiful game. You don’t have to involve this kind of thing with this game.
“That is something that unfortunately this brand did and, well, it’s their responsibility to do such a thing but the image they have [projected] at least for 80 million people in Iran is not a really nice image.”
Carlos Queiroz, who asked Nike to apologise for their actions on Wednesday, echoed Jahanbakhsh’s comments following the match and asked for politics and sport to be separated at the World Cup so that “his boys could play football.”
“We train and we play under [bad] conditions,” Queiroz said. “No pitches, no camps, no friendly games because of the sanctions. I think it’s my duty to say, ‘let our boys play football.’ They are just football players.
“Let them enjoy football like all the other football players in the world. They are not against nobody or against nothing. They just want to express themselves and play football.”