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After months of anticipation, Iran’s national team played in the World Cup on Monday night in Los Angeles.
Iran tied with New Zealand 2–2, the fourth draw of the day, a rarity that has happened only once before in the World Cup in 1958.
Just hours after the final whistle, the players boarded a flight back to their base camp in Tijuana, Mexico.
“They didn’t even give us time to recover,” coach Amir Ghalenoei said through an interpreter following the match. “After the game today, they said to us, ‘You have to leave immediately.’ It’s very important for us to have time for recovery, [but] we are asked to get on a plane and return to our camp in Tijuana, and we are really troubled by that.”
Ghalenoei said “our team is perhaps the most oppressed” in the tournament.
After Monday’s match, Iran captain Mehdi Taremi said he thinks “FIFA have to help us more than this” because “everything is like a disaster” for the team.
“It’s so bad and it’s affecting our team, and we just want peace, which is the standards of FIFA,” Taremi said. “We don’t follow the excuse, we’re just looking forward. We’re having hope for the next two games, and we will do our best for our people and we bring the joy for our supporters.”
Ghalenoei confirmed many of Iran’s substitutions in the match weren’t made for “technical reasons,” but because players developed cramps that he blamed on the travel schedule. Iran was only allowed to enter the U.S. on Sunday, and had to leave immediately following the match despite wanting to stay another night. Taremi said the team’s journey from Tijuana to Los Angeles took five hours.
“We were clear this was the process,” Trump Administration World Cup czar Andrew Giuliani told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
More than a dozen team staffers and federation leaders from Iran’s traveling party, including federation president Mehdi Taj, were denied entry into the U.S. Those officials watched the match from Mexico. One player, Mehdi Torabi, was only given a single-entry visa, and the federation is trying to get him a new one so he can join the team for upcoming matches.
Iran initially chose to train in Tucson, Arizona, during the World Cup, but just weeks after that announcement went public, the U.S. and Israel launched joint attacks on Iran on Feb. 28 that threw the team’s participation into question.
The back-and-forth carried on for months. FIFA repeatedly stated it wanted all qualified teams to participate. Iranian officials delivered seemingly contradictory statements. The most fluid stance came from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he didn’t care if Iran participated, but after a meeting with FIFA supposedly said they would be welcome, then said he couldn’t guarantee the players’ “life and safety.”
FIFA denied Iran’s request to move its matches to Mexico, but it allowed the federation to have its base camp in Tijuana. The federation said it requested the move, but Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the U.S. didn’t want the Iranian team staying overnight in the country.
Iran next faces Belgium in Los Angeles on June 21, then squares off against Egypt in FIFA’s Pride Match in Seattle on June 26.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino visited the team in the locker room after the match. “I know what you go through, I understand, but you are stronger than everything,” he told the players through a translator.
“I’m very happy we managed to get Iran to come and play in the World Cup and I’m proud of the work of my team and grateful to the administrations of the three host countries for having cooperated with us to make this happen,” Infantino told reporters in his opening press conference last week.
Flag Controversy
Ahead of the tournament, FIFA banned pre-revolutionary Iranian flags, viewing them as a political statement. FIFA’s official stance was that it wanted only flags of its member associations, and the current Iranian flag is used by the soccer federation. Earlier Monday, a judge ruled that FIFA’s ban could stand.
The old flag, which features a lion and a sun, is a symbol of protest for some in the Iranian diaspora—particularly supporters of the previous monarchy—which is heavily concentrated in Southern California.
Despite FIFA’s ban, the lion and sun flags were everywhere at Monday’s match. Some posts on social media claimed security removed flags from the stands, but the flags were still seen all over the stadium. FIFA did not respond to questions about the flags and its strategy going forward.
Before the game, hundreds of people protested against the current leadership in Tehran as well as the team, waving the lion and sun flag outside of the stadium.
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