Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Monday her government agreed to allow the Iranian national football team to stay in Mexico during the World Cup, adding that the United States (US) did not want to host the team.<\/p>\n
Sheinbaum said football\u2019s governing body FIFA approached her government after the US said it did not want Iran\u2019s squad to stay in the country throughout the tournament, despite Iran playing all three of its group matches there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no reason to deny them the possibility of staying in Mexico,\u201d Sheinbaum said during her daily press conference.<\/p>\n
The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Mehdi Taj, head of Iran\u2019s football federation, said on Saturday the team\u2019s base would be moved from Arizona to the Mexican border city of Tijuana during the tournament.<\/p>\n
Taj added that the move would help avoid visa-related complications and that the squad would be able to travel directly to Mexico aboard Iran Air flights.<\/p>\n
The Iranian team\u2019s participation in the June 11 to July 19 tournament had been in question since the US and Israel attacked Iran in late February.<\/p>\n
Iran will play its first two Group G matches in Los Angeles against New Zealand on June 15 and Belgium on June 21, before facing Egypt in Seattle on June 26.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21509,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-35415","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The Iranian team\u2019s participation in the June 11 to July 19 tournament had been in question","published_date":"","news_description":"The Iranian team\u2019s participation in the June 11 to July 19 tournament had been in question","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35415","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":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35417,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35415\/revisions\/35417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=35415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}