Iranian Footballers and Fans Protest Regime at World Cup Qualifiers

As a fan of both liberty and sports, it's nice to see when the popular power of the former can help the cause of the latter. In Seoul, South Korea, the Iranian soccer team showed more than its traditional colors, adding make-shift green armbands to their uniforms, in a show of support for Iranian citizens who are protesting the results of Iran's rigged election. Green was the campaign color employed by opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi:

Five Iranian players in today's World Cup qualifier against South Korea took to the pitch with green armbands in apparent support of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the opposition leader who has alleged massive fraud in last week's presidential election.

The protesters included team captain Mehdi Mahdavikia and Mohammed Ali Karimi, the former Bayern Munich midfielder, although all five had taken the armbands off by the time they came back out for the second half.

I wonder who intervened during halftime.

But protests weren't relegated to the field:

Dozens of Iran fans had staged a protest ahead of the match in Seoul to condemn the alleged vote-rigging which saw the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected by a landslide. During the match itself they unfurled a banner which read "Go to Hell Dictator!" and held up green paper signs asking "Where is my vote?"

The Iranian team needed a win to automatically qualify for the 2010 Word Cup, but ended up with a tie. The Telegraph has a slide show of the protesting players, here.

Reuters has a great video report on the fan protests, which includes this quote: "I wish I was there right now, so I could go to the streets, like the other youths, and shout for freedom."