{"id":29350,"date":"2026-03-20T11:14:05","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T09:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=29350"},"modified":"2026-03-20T11:14:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T09:14:05","slug":"iranian-football-federation-president-to-boycott-us-not-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/iranian-football-federation-president-to-boycott-us-not-world-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian football federation President to &#8216;boycott US, not World Cup&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Iran&#8217;s football federation said this week it had opened talks with Fifa about potentially relocating the team&#8217;s matches from the US to Mexico, though the global governing body has maintained that the tournament&#8217;s schedule remains unchanged. Mexico&#8217;s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said on Tuesday that her country was prepared to host Iran&#8217;s first-round matches if required, owing to the conflict in the Middle East.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Iran&#8217;s participation at the finals in the US, Canada and Mexico has been in doubt since the US and Israel launched airstrikes on the country last month, with Donald Trump warning that the safety of Iranian players would be at risk if they travelled to the tournament.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;ChannelAfrica&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21350,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-29350","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Iranian football federation President, Mehdi Taj says they will \"boycott the United States (US) \" but \"not the World Cup. Iran are scheduled to play their group matches in the US in this summer's tournament","published_date":"2026-03-20 00:00:00","news_description":"Iranian football federation President, Mehdi Taj says they will \"boycott the United States (US) \" but \"not the World Cup. Iran are scheduled to play their group matches in the US in this summer's tournament","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29351,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/29350\/revisions\/29351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=29350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}