{"id":314805,"date":"2025-11-28T18:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T18:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/314805\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T18:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T18:19:08","slug":"iran-to-boycott-world-cup-draw-over-lack-of-visa-for-federation-president-world-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/314805\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran to boycott World Cup draw over lack of visa for federation president | World Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran are to boycott next week\u2019s World Cup<\/a> draw in Washington after the president of the country\u2019s football federation was denied a visa to enter the United States.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Iranian football federation (FFIRI) described the decision to reject the visa application as \u201cunrelated to sport\u201d and the move raises the prospect of Iran<\/a> withdrawing from the tournament altogether.<\/p>\n

Iran is one of 19 nations whose citizens are restricted from entering the US since a directive issued by Donald Trump in June. An exemption to the ban was granted to athletes, coaches or \u201cpersons performing a necessary support role\u201d who were travelling for the World Cup or \u201cother major sporting event\u201d, but appears not to have been applied in this instance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have informed Fifa that the decisions taken are unrelated to sport and that the members of the Iranian delegation will not participate in the World Cup draw,\u201d the federation spokesperson Amir Mehdi Alavi was quoted as saying by the English language newspaper the Tehran Times.<\/p>\n

Iran played the USA at the 2022 World Cup. Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay\/Reuters<\/p>\n

According to the newspaper, the president of the FFIRI, Mehdi Taj, was one of three individuals denied a visa by the US state department, while four people \u2013 including the head coach, Amir Ghalenoei \u2013 were granted one. Reports in October suggested both Taj and Ghalenoei had seen their visa applications rejected, with the Tehran Times reporting that the FFIRI had taken up the issue personally with Fifa\u2019s president, Gianni Infantino.<\/p>\n

Infantino has previously pledged that \u201ceveryone will be welcome\u201d at the World Cup, which begins in Mexico City on 11 June. Speaking on the sidelines of an assembly of the European Football Clubs organisation on 9 October, he had sought to calm concerns that visas could be denied to athletes or officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have excellent discussions with the US government. There is a White House task force chaired by President Trump, and all these topics are discussed there,\u201d Infantino said. \u201cWith all the relevant secretaries of state, there will be no issues with regard to visas, obviously for the participating teams and delegations, and we are working on something as well for fans. Hopefully, some good news will come out very soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fifa has since confirmed the creation of the Fifa Pass, a scheme that will allow World Cup ticket holders priority access to the visa application process before the tournament. Applications are not guaranteed to be successful, however. According to reporting in Politico, fans of Haiti \u2013 who qualified for their second World Cup last week but whose nation is also on Trump\u2019s restricted travel list \u2013 are able to submit visa applications but \u201cmay be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fifa, the FFIRI and the US Department of State have been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran are to boycott next week\u2019s World Cup draw in Washington after the president of the country\u2019s football…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-314805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}