FIFA appear to have ruled out the possibility of Iran moving their World Cup matches to Mexico, saying it is “looking forward” to teams competing in line with the original match schedule.<\/p>\n
The president of the Iranian football federation, Mehdi Taj, said his organisation was “negotiating” with FIFA to move the team’s matches away from the United States, amid American and Israeli air strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n
However, a FIFA spokesperson said on Tuesday: “FIFA is in regular contact with all participating member associations, including IR Iran, to discuss planning for the FIFA World Cup 2026.<\/p>\n
“FIFA is looking forward to all participating teams competing as per the match schedule announced on 6 December, 2025.”<\/p>\n
Should FIFA maintain this stance, it seems likely Iran would feel compelled to withdraw.<\/p>\n
Iran are scheduled to play all three group games in the US, kicking off against New Zealand in Los Angeles on 15 June. Should they and the US finish second in their respective groups, the sides would meet in the last 32.<\/p>\n
The US and Israel launched air strikes on Iran on 28 February, with Iran in turn targeting other Gulf nations housing US military bases.<\/p>\n
The Iranian embassy to Mexico issued a post on X on Tuesday containing quotes from the country\u2019s FA chief Taj.<\/p>\n
“When Trump has explicitly stated that he cannot ensure the security of the Iranian national team, we will certainly not travel to America,” Taj said.<\/p>\n
“We are currently negotiating with FIFA to hold Iran\u2019s matches in the World Cup in Mexico.”<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s first group opponents are New Zealand, who they are scheduled to face in Los Angeles on 15 June.<\/p>\n
The chief executive of New Zealand Football, Andrew Pragnell, told local media on Tuesday that he doubted FIFA would relocate Iran\u2019s matches.<\/p>\n
The New Zealand national team\u2019s head coach, Darren Bazeley, told reporters in the country: “Right now we\u2019re still continuing as though we\u2019re playing Iran.<\/p>\n
“They\u2019re the team that qualified and we got drawn against them. That\u2019s still the fixture and until we get told otherwise, we\u2019ll continue with that preparation.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, if things change, then we\u2019ll deal with that, but that would be (people at) a higher level than myself involved in those discussions.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIFA appear to have ruled out the possibility of Iran moving their World Cup matches to Mexico, saying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-350839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350839","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=350839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}