Daily News Channel
Four Iranian footballers have been "retired" from the national side after protesting against the contested election result in the country during a match against South Korea. The players drew attention to the situation in Iran by wearing green armbands during last week’s World Cup qualifying match in Seoul.
Six days after official election results awarded him victory in Iran’s presidential elections and four days after he compared the putative losers to fans of a losing soccer team, unleashing a wave of fury in his country, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a broadcast aired Thursday his remarks had been taken out of context. “I was addressing those who started riots and set up fires and attacked people,” he told the state-run news agency IRINN in an interview. “I said these [people] are nothing, they are not even part of the nation of Iran.