{"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":["post-393028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-against","tag-champions","tag-cup","tag-donald","tag-envoy","tag-fifa","tag-fourtime","tag-game","tag-in","tag-iran","tag-italy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opening","tag-president","tag-pushing","tag-replace","tag-seeks","tag-sports","tag-their","tag-this","tag-to","tag-trump","tag-upcoming","tag-which","tag-whites","tag-with","tag-world","tag-would","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}]}}