Iran’s World Cup place in U.S. put in doubt by Middle East conflict<\/a><\/p>\nHowever, whether the Iranian team will come to the U.S. is uncertain.<\/p>\n
“What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,” Iran’s top soccer official, Mehdi Taj, said last weekend as the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated attacks that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens more senior officials.<\/p>\n
Still, Iran has not announced it is withdrawing from the tournament, which no team that qualified has done in the past 75 years. Iran, the second-highest ranked team in Asia, was drawn in a group with Belgium, Egypt and New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“I really don’t care,” if Iran participates, Trump told Politico on Tuesday. “I think Iran is a very badly defeated country. They’re running on fumes.”<\/p>\n
FIFA did not immediately respond to a request on whether Iran federation officials attended the Atlanta workshop.<\/p>\n
Fan festivals are being slimmed down<\/p>\n
Fan festivals have been a key part of the World Cup experience in the past two decades. They offer a chance for thousands of fans without match tickets to take part in the World Cup atmosphere by coming together to watch games on a big screen.<\/p>\n
Some of those plans are now being scaled back in the U.S.<\/p>\n
New York\/New Jersey eliminated its Fan Fest in Jersey City, New Jersey, even though it had started selling tickets for an event scheduled to be open every day of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Planning to sell tickets was itself unprecedented for World Cup fan zones, which were free to enter since being launched at the 2006 edition in Germany.<\/p>\n
Seattle cut down its original plan and rescheduled it for smaller venues and Boston trimmed its event to 16 days.<\/p>\n
The chief operating officer of Miami’s FIFA World Cup host committee said during a congressional hearing on Feb. 24 that it might cancel its event if it did not receive federal funding within 30 days. Kansas City, Missouri, Police Deputy Chief Joseph Maybin said the city had an immediate need for federal funds to prepare security.<\/p>\n
House Republicans said federal money may be held up by the partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, caused by Democrats insisting restrictions be placed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.<\/p>\n
Foxborough games threatened<\/p>\n
The New England Patriots’ stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, is due to host seven World Cup games, starting with Haiti-Scotland on June 13 and ending with a quarterfinal on July 9. That is FIFA’s plan.<\/p>\n
The Select Board of Foxborough has refused to issue a permit for World Cup matches at the stadium and set a March 17 deadline to be paid $7.8 million – what the town estimates will be the cost of police and other expenses. Foxborough said it was not part of FIFA’s hosting agreement with Boston.<\/p>\n
Pushback against FIFA’s ticket prices<\/p>\n
FIFA has about 7 million seats to fill for the World Cup matches and said last month it received 500 million ticket requests. FIFA president Gianni Infantino has proclaimed all 104 games are sold out and yet some fans received emails last week offering an extra 48-hour window for tickets sales.<\/p>\n
FIFA’s prices in December ranged up to $8,680 per ticket. After criticism, FIFA said it will offer a few hundred $60 tickets for every game to the 48 national federations in the tournament. Those federations will decide how to distribute them to their most loyal fans who attended previous games.<\/p>\n
Most seats on FIFA’s ticket resale platform – seeking to cut out the secondary market and earn FIFA extra 15% fees from buyers and sellers – are well past the $1,000 mark.<\/p>\n
Cartel violence in Mexico<\/p>\n
Mexico’s ability to co-host the World Cup has been under scrutiny after a surge in violence last week in the state of Jalisco following the military’s killing of a powerful cartel boss.<\/p>\n
The state’s capital, Guadalajara, is set to host four matches during the group stage.<\/p>\n
Mexico’s government insists the World Cup won’t be affected and President Claudia Sheinbaum said there’s no risk for fans coming to the tournament.<\/p>\n
Infantino told Sheinbaum that he has full confidence in Mexico as a World Cup host.<\/p>\n
The FIFA leader has repeatedly promised the 2026 World Cup will be the greatest and most inclusive.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENEVA — With 100 days to go until the World Cup, the Iran war has added a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[229451,4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-503664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-229451","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}