Iranian football club to blame in statue spat with Saudi: ruling

The Asian Football Confederation said Thursday an Iranian club team was at fault for displaying a statue of slain Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani during a match against a Saudi rival.

Players from Saudi club Al Ittihad refused to take the pitch for their AFC Champions League match last month against Iran's Sepahan after seeing the statue - the first public glitch in a surprise rapprochement between the two Middle East powers brokered by China in March.

Sepahan "created an unsafe and unstable security environment within the Stadium which led to the cancellation of the Match," the AFC said in a ruling published on Thursday.

The club "did not act in a politically neutral manner", it said, while noting that the match would be counted as a Sepahan forfeit.

Sepahan "is warned that it should remove the relevant statue and banners" from the stadium in Isfahan and that "any repeat violation may be met with more severe punishment", it added.

Soleimani oversaw Iran's military operations across the Middle East until his death in a targeted US drone strike in 2020.

He remains a revered figure in Iran but is a bugbear for Saudi Arabia as he steered Iran's intervention in regional conflicts for more than a decade.

Sepahan said in a statement on Thursday that it "does not consider (the AFC's) decision to be correct in any way" and plans to appeal, local media reported.

The dispute erupted one month after Saudi Arabia and Iran announced a "groundbreaking" deal to resume home-and-away football matches between club sides after seven years of competing in neutral venues.

That step represented the latest sign of warming ties following the landmark diplomatic breakthrough in March in which the two countries agreed to restore diplomatic relations and reopen their respective embassies.