Cristiano Ronaldo receives warm welcome in Iran ahead of closed-door match Football News

Thousands of people turned out to welcome the footballer before the AFC Champions League match behind closed doors.

Tehran, Iran – Hundreds of fans were in Tehran to welcome Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo as he arrived in the Iranian capital with Al Nasr ahead of the AFC Champions League match against Persepolis FC.

Fans tracked the plane carrying the players before it landed at Imam Khomeini International Airport on Monday. As the team bus left the capital’s airport, hundreds of fans, many wearing Al Nasr jerseys, gathered, chanting his name and cheering him on.

Tehran’s municipal government decorated the city with banners welcoming Ronaldo and his teammates, with messages displayed in Farsi, English and Arabic.

However, fans who have gone out of their way to catch a glimpse of the superstar won’t be able to see him perform.

Persepolis will play the match behind closed doors on Wednesday as punishment from the AFC over a social media post their team made in 2020 that was deemed offensive to an Indian club.

As this is the club’s first home AFC Champions League game after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, crowd bans are currently in place. The AFC rejected the club’s request to defer the penalty to another game.

large crowd

Video posted online showed heavy security surrounding the bus transporting the players to the luxury Espinas Palace hotel in northwest Tehran.

Near the hotel, video showed dozens of fans chasing the bus. The bus driver reportedly gained around 150,000 followers on Instagram within a few hours.

When the team arrived, more people gathered at the hotel entrance and some had entered the lobby and hallways. One video showed hundreds of people climbing the hill behind the hotel.

When Al Nasr arrived, they were surrounded, the players slowly climbing up the three floors reserved for them amid deafening chants of Ronaldo’s name.

The Saudi club was eventually forced to cancel training for the day.

Ronaldo also met with Abdullah Aranazi, who started serving as the Saudi ambassador to Tehran earlier this month after Iran and Saudi Arabia reached a China-brokered March deal to restore the seven-year-old diplomatic relations after a rift in 2004, and exchanged special envoys.

The Persepolis head coach presented the footballer with a colorful hand-woven Persian rug, one of Iran’s most famous exports.

Reza Darvish, president of the Persepolis club, said: “I asked him, ‘Do you know that one of the reasons you are popular in Iran is that you support the Palestinian people?’ He said: ‘Yes. , I’m very happy about it.”

Last week, Darwish announced that Ronaldo and all Al Nasr players and staff will be issued special SIM cards during their stay in Iran, which will allow them to access the internet without any hindrance – something that Iranian citizens cannot do of.

https://twitter.com/AlNassrFC_EN/status/1703879998833066386?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Tens of thousands of fans were disappointed not to be able to watch the five-time Ballon d’Or winner play at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium.

“This will probably be Ronaldo’s only official football match in Iran and we won’t be able to be there to watch it happen. It’s a huge blow,” a 23-year-old fan told Al Jazeera.

While there’s no denying how popular Ronaldo is, some Iranians online have pointed out that the sheer trouble people go through to get a glimpse of the superstar could also be due to politics and the country’s association with major international events and figures of isolation. sanctions.

“The Iranian nation is forced to be content with seeing world phenomena on television rather than experiencing them firsthand. This is true for many things, from events and big stars to vehicles and new technologies,” former MP Abdul Karim Abdolkarim Hosseinzadeh wrote on X (formerly Twitter).