Last month alone, two prominent Iranian soccer players found themselves summoned to the Ethics Committee of the Iranian soccer federation. Masoud Shojaei was called in for discussing corruption in Iranian soccer in an interview with a foreign media outlet. One week later, on Dec. 10, Mehdi Rahmati, the goalkeeper and current captain of the Esteghlal Football Club, was summoned for taking a picture with a woman who was not wearing a headscarf during a team camp in Armenia.
In June, the Ethics Committee suspended Sosha Makani, a goalkeeper with Tehran’s well-established Persepolis club, from domestic competitions for six months for having worn “inappropriate clothing.” Other players have also been summoned and in some cases faced suspensions over matters such as attending mixed gender parties, plucking their eyebrows, eating in public during the fasting month of Ramadan, getting tattoos and posting private photos online.
