The ticket says Iran v New Zealand. But outside the Los Angeles Stadium, long before kick-off, it is already a different contest entirely. Hundreds of pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun flags are snapping in the California air — banned by FIFA inside the ground as a political symbol, yet flying there anyway, stitched onto shirts, raised in the stands. A few hundred protesters have gathered at the gates, chanting "Mullahs' team is not my team.

" Someone starts the pre-revolutionary national anthem. A young man nearby is asked to translate. He smiles. "It means freedom and pride," he says.

Inside, the soundscape flips. The same green, white and red fills the terraces, but the roar is for the players, not against them. Iran fall behind twice, and twice they claw back. The final whistle seals a 2-2 draw that sends the Iranian sections of the crowd into genuine, uncomplicated joy — at least for a moment.

Up close, though, the flags tell the whole story. Some bear the Islamic Republic's emblem. Others carry the Lion and Sun. Samaneh, an Iranian-American who has lived in the United States for a decade, stands somewhere in between.

"It's complicated," she says. "I'm here to support Iran, not the regime. I miss my country." Her mother is trapped in Iran by paperwork and President Trump's travel restrictions.

She cried when the national anthem played. This is the impossible geometry the Iranian players are asked to perform within: represent a state while half your diaspora considers that state their enemy. Football, the team's officials keep insisting, should unite people. At the Los Angeles Stadium on this particular afternoon, it did the opposite — and revealed every fracture with astonishing clarity.