Anti-Diplomacy Football of Iran and US; the Empowering role of Political Economy Embargos

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Rahim Zare 1
Mahdi Shariati Feizabadi 2
Fernando Delgado 3
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Tourism Management, School of Management and Accounting, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Department of Human Sciences, Technical and Vocational University, Tehran, Iran
3 Deputy Division Chief at the Resource Management and Policy Coordination Division of the IMF's Institute for Capacity Development (IDC), USA, responsible for Coordination and funding of the IMF technical assistance in macroeconomic frameworks to
10.22034/ntsmj.2024.2030117.1021
Abstract
The confrontation between Iran and the United States in the 1998 France and 2022 Qatar World Cups marked two different and distinct experiences for the Iranian society; The aim of the current research was to analyze the thematic anti-diplomacy of football between Iran and the United States with the role of strengthening the economic and political embargos of this country against Iran. The statistical population included the research of experts in the field of international relations and sports management, which according to the nature of the research, 14 people were selected as a statistical sample and sampling continued until reaching theoretical saturation in the form of a snowball. The study tool was a semi-structured interview using the method of Brown and Clark (2023), which finally led to the extraction of 18 codes and 4 main themes. The findings showed that financial concepts (4.27), infrastructures (4.25), technical concepts (4.17) and communications (4.12) were the most important effects of embargos on strengthening football anti-diplomacy between Iran, respectively and the United States. According to the findings of the research and the possibility of the first official appearance of Iranian football players in the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, it can be acknowledged that football is a major component in the economic and political interactions of the two countries, in case the embargos are strengthened are faced with numerous and diverse challenges and injuries in the international arena, which will eventually cause football diplomacy to become a victim in this regard.
Keywords
Middle East
Football Player
FIFA World Cup
United States
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