{"id":476449,"date":"2026-03-15T05:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T05:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/476449\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T05:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T05:41:08","slug":"iraq-taking-private-plane-to-mexico-for-world-cup-play-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/476449\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq taking private plane to Mexico for World Cup play-off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Iraq will travel to Mexico by private plane for their World Cup play-off despite calls from coach Graham Arnold to postpone the match amid the US-Israeli war with Iran, the Iraqi Football Association&#8217;s president says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Iraq are due to face either Bolivia or Suriname in Monterrey on 31 March, with the winner of the inter-continental play-off booking their place at the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Airspace in the Middle East has been closed since 28 February when US-Israeli strikes began and Iran responded by firing missiles and drones at Israel, Gulf states and other nearby countries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But in a video statement carried by the Iraqi News Agency, Iraq FA chief Adnan Dirjal said he had written to Fifa to explain the &#8220;difficulty of the journey&#8221; and world football&#8217;s governing body had been &#8220;co-operative&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;[Fifa president Gianni] Infantino directed [Fifa secretary general] Mattias Grafstrom&#8230; to follow up and help overcome all difficulties to facilitate the departure of our national team to Mexico.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The national team will depart at the end of the week to Mexico via a private plane.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iraq will travel to Mexico by private plane for their World Cup play-off despite calls from coach Graham&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-476449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}