Iran drew their World Cup opener with New Zealand but emphatically won the support of the Iranian community inside SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, having overcome unprecedented obstacles just to play at these finals.<\/p>\n
The Asian team hit back twice through Ramin Rezaeian and Mohammad Mohebbi to force a 2-2 draw, with Eli Just grabbing a brace for the All Whites.<\/p>\n
A World Cup had never kicked off with a host at war with a participant before. Iran have faced the threat of being unable to take their place at the tournament ever since the United States and Israel launched a bombing campaign back in February, been forced to change training venue from the US to Mexico to combat visa issues, and still had 11 non-playing officials blocked from entering the States for the team’s matches.<\/p>\n
‘Lion and Sun\u2019 flags \u2013 the emblem of Iran before the 1979 Islamic revolution \u2013 were in evidence within the stadium despite FIFA\u2019s efforts to ban them and there was definitely booing of the anthem before the game from Los Angeles\u2019 Iranian diaspora in attendance.<\/p>\n
Overwhelmingly though, the fans had decided the team were not the regime, and roared them on from the outset.<\/p>\n
Iran made the brighter start but fell behind in the seventh minute after Nottingham Forest striker Chris Wood held the ball up at well and combined with Just, and the Motherwell man steered a volley past Alireza Behranvand in the Iran goal.<\/p>\n
Iran captain Mehdi Taremi struck the post after a long run from his own half, and the equaliser came in the 32nd minute as New Zealand defender Finn Surman denied Shahriyar Moghanloo a strike on goal but the ball rolled on to right-back Rezaeian, who poked the ball in after continuing a forward run in the hope of a give and go.<\/p>\n
Just scored his and New Zealand\u2019s second 10 minutes into the second half, rounding off a flowing team move, but Iran were level again when Rezaeian swung in a cross from the right and Mohebbi guided a header in off the foot of the post.<\/p>\n
Both sides had half-chances to win it, but the game ended level.<\/p>\n
Watch every game of the FIFA 2026 World Cup live on RT\u00c9 with highlights on RT\u00c9 Sport digital platforms and live blogs on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran drew their World Cup opener with New Zealand but emphatically won the support of the Iranian community…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-501997","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\/501997","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=501997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}