{"id":414687,"date":"2026-04-24T05:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T05:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/414687\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T05:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T05:34:10","slug":"miguel-delaney-could-italy-really-replace-iran-at-world-cup-2026-if-so-why-not-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/414687\/","title":{"rendered":"Miguel Delaney: Could Italy really replace Iran at World Cup 2026? If so why not Ireland?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Italy supporters watch the World Cup play-off final against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Rome last month. Italy lost the match in a penalty shoot-out and failed to qualify for a third straight World Cup. Photo: Tiziana Fabi\/Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/127ce11b-d6a2-4a57-bb51-cc878f174773.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Italy supporters watch the World Cup play-off final against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Rome last month. Italy lost the match in a penalty shoot-out and failed to qualify for a third straight World Cup. Photo: Tiziana Fabi\/Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Fifa is still aiming for Iran to play at the 2026 World Cup, despite the suggestion of Italy replacing them illustrating how the situation is reaching ever deeper levels of politicisation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">With the US-Iran conflict still unresolved, Paolo Zampolli \u2013 an envoy to the United States president \u2013 confirmed to the Financial Times that he floated the idea of the four-time winners stepping in to both Donald Trump and Fifa president Gianni Infantino.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italy supporters watch the World Cup play-off final against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Rome last month. Italy lost the match&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[969,1113,61,11829,60,102,181930,43,102024],"class_list":["post-414687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-donald-trump","tag-fai","tag-ie","tag-iran","tag-ireland","tag-italy","tag-miguel-delaney","tag-news","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414687","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=414687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}