{"id":393028,"date":"2026-04-23T01:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T01:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/393028\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T01:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T01:48:08","slug":"trump-envoy-seeks-to-replace-iran-with-italy-in-upcoming-fifa-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/393028\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump envoy seeks to replace Iran with Italy in upcoming Fifa World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran advanced to a seventh World Cup after topping their group in qualifying and were drawn in Group G with New Zealand, Egypt and Belgium. They are set to face the All Whites on June 16 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Last week, Infantino said that Iran will \u201cfor sure\u201d participate in the event despite the Middle East war.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran is coming for sure. We hope that by then the situation will be a peaceful situation, that would definitely help. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut Iran has to come, they represent their people, they have qualified, the players want to play.\u201d <\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s participation in the global tournament had been thrown into doubt by the war with the US and Israel that broke out on February 28.<\/p>\n

\u201cSports should be outside of politics,\u201d Infantino said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s nobody else that believes in building bridges and keeping them intact and together, we are doing the job.\u201d <\/p>\n

The World Cup, jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada, starts on June 11.<\/p>\n

– With AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran advanced to a seventh World Cup after topping their group in qualifying and were drawn in Group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9092,31100,10542,2178,102350,36862,42447,5269,78,16609,1224,111,139,69,10521,2572,16485,4482,27950,213,165,1961,61,2179,11744,5977,5264,102,377,6730,1530],"class_list":{"0":"post-393028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-against","9":"tag-champions","10":"tag-cup","11":"tag-donald","12":"tag-envoy","13":"tag-fifa","14":"tag-fourtime","15":"tag-game","16":"tag-in","17":"tag-iran","18":"tag-italy","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-opening","23":"tag-president","24":"tag-pushing","25":"tag-replace","26":"tag-seeks","27":"tag-sports","28":"tag-their","29":"tag-this","30":"tag-to","31":"tag-trump","32":"tag-upcoming","33":"tag-which","34":"tag-whites","35":"tag-with","36":"tag-world","37":"tag-would","38":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}