{"id":341928,"date":"2026-03-12T06:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T06:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/341928\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T06:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T06:55:13","slug":"irans-sports-minister-says-football-team-will-not-play-at-2026-world-cup-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/341928\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s sports minister says football team will not play at 2026 World Cup \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran cannot participate in the 2026 World Cup<\/a> after the United States killed their leader\u00a0Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the sports minister, Ahmad Donyamali, said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The United States and Israel launched airstrikes on\u00a0Iran<\/a>\u00a0nearly two weeks ago, killing the Islamic Republic\u2019s supreme leader, leading to a region-wide conflict in the Gulf.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsidering that this corrupt regime [the US] has assassinated our leader, under no circumstances can we participate in the\u00a0World Cup,\u201d the minister told state television. \u201cOur children are not safe and, fundamentally, such conditions for participation do not exist.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the malicious actions they have carried out against Iran, they have forced two wars on us over eight or nine months and have killed and martyred thousands of our people. Therefore, we certainly cannot have such a presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donyamali\u2019s comments came after the Fifa president,\u00a0Gianni Infantino, reported that Donald Trump had said Iran were \u201cwelcome\u201d to play at the upcoming World Cup, despite the ongoing war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Infantino said that during a meeting with Trump to discuss preparations for the competition, \u201cwe also spoke about the current situation in Iran\u201d. Infantino wrote on Instagram: \u201cDuring the discussions, president Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iranian officials suggested recently that the country\u2019s participation was in some doubt because of the war and last week\u00a0Trump said \u201cI really don\u2019t care\u201d\u00a0whether Iran take part in the 48-nation tournament being co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n

Iran are scheduled to play group games against New Zealand and Belgium in Inglewood, California, and Egypt in Seattle. If the US and Iran finish second in their respective groups, they would meet on July 3rd in Dallas.<\/p>\n

Infantino has a close relationship with the US president, who in December was given\u00a0Fifa\u2019s inaugural peace prize. \u201cWe all need an event like the Fifa World Cup to bring people together now more than ever,\u201d Infantino said, adding that he thanked Trump \u201cfor his support\u201d.<\/p>\n

This week Fifa\u2019s World Cup chief operating officer, Heimo Schirgi, said the tournament was \u201ctoo big\u201d to be postponed because of global turmoil caused by the US and Israeli war against Iran. \u201cWe hope that everyone can participate that has qualified,\u201d Schirgi said.<\/p>\n

If the US refused to host the Iran team it could risk being removed as a World Cup host by Fifa. That is what happened to Indonesia three years ago when the country refused to welcome Israel for the men\u2019s Under-20 World Cup eight months after the Israeli team qualified. Fifa dropped Indonesia weeks before the scheduled first game and moved that tournament to Argentina. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran cannot participate in the 2026 World Cup after the United States killed their leader\u00a0Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2956,61,11829,60,112,4018],"class_list":["post-341928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-fifa","tag-ie","tag-iran","tag-ireland","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}