Ali Thameem
As a teenage boy, Alireza Beiranvand used to sleep outside the training grounds of local football clubs, hoping to earn trials. Hoping for his big break.
Beiranvand would wake up on the street to find coins left beside him by passers-by, money which would supplement his part-time work.
He worked as a street cleaner. He worked at a dressmaking factory and, later, in a carwash. He worked at a pizzeria, only to get fired.
Beiranvand was the eldest child of a Kurdish shephard. He grew up into a nomadic family who travelled the mountainous countryside of western Iran to find grassland for their sheep.
The young Beiranvand, like all children, loved games. One of his favourite games was ‘dal paran’, a traditional folk competition which involves hurling stones off the side of a mountain. He had instinctive hand-eye co-ordination, and the game gave him upper-body strength. Beiranvand had all the skills of a natural goalkeeper.
He was shepherding from the age of three. But when he was twelve, the young boy decided to run away from home. He sacrificed everything – his family, his school – for the sake of football.
Beiranvand’s father, Mortaza, had told him that football was no job; it was a game. Worse still, football was a distraction from doing real work. He threw out Alireza’s training jersey and his new gloves, which Alireza had bought after his local side’s goalkeeper was injured and he volunteered to step in, desperate to play.
So the young boy asked a relative for money, took the next six-hour bus to Tehran, and never looked back.
At sixteen years of age, Beiranvand got his first big break he was looking for. He joined the youth academy of the now-defunct Naft Tehran. The coach, aware of his homelessness, offered him the chance to train with the club, and sleep in a prayer room.
Two decades later, Alireza Beiranvand is playing in his third World Cup for Iran, won the Man of the Match award in Sunday’s 0-0 draw against Belgium, and has secured two Guinness World Records.
Beiranvand’s rise to stardom was not a fairytale and the remainder of his childhood years were tough, to put it mildly.
Six years after moving to Tehran, at the age of 18, Beiranvand’s life began to take shape. He earned a professional deal at Naft Tehran and had enough money to find a home. He married his wife, Akram, with whom he now has two children.
Beiranvand soon became first-choice goalkeeper at Naft Tehran and got his debut for Iran in 2015.
His shot-stopping ability earned the 1.95m goalkeeper the nickname ‘The Wall of Persia’. In the 2018 World Cup, he conceded just two goals across Iran’s three games against Morocco, Spain and Portugal. And he is one of the few goalkeepers to have saved a Cristiano Ronaldo penalty.
In October 2016, in a match against South Korea, Beiranvand threw the ball over 61 metres (200 feet), which is the furthest recorded distance a football has been thrown in a competitive match. Those childhood days of playing ‘dal paran’ game back in Iran, had shaped his playing style.
Remarkably, Beiranvand also holds the Guinness World Record for the longest football drop kick, too, at over 78 metres (256 feet).
Beiranvand has already produced one of the best saves of this World Cup. In Sunday’s draw against Belgium, the goalkeeper denied Maxim De Cuyper’s powerful strike from point-blank range. If it weren’t for that brilliant reaction from the goalkeeper, who had to pull himself off the ground for that one-handed save, Iran would have lost hope of knockout stages by now.
“He’s a good goalie and today he proved it again,” applauded Thibaut Courtois, the Belgium and Real Madrid goalkeeper. Beiranvand was awarded Man of the Match, after the game.
After last night’s draw against Egypt, Iran has accumulated three points, and is one of the third-placed teams waiting for their fate. Iran remains one of the few teams yet to be beaten.
Whatever that fate may be, Alireza Beiranvand and the rest of the Iranian team has shown the human side of Iran. Their sacrifices, their conduct on and off the pitch, has put a dent in the narrative about Iranians pushed onto us for ages.
