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An undated picture of\u00a0FIFA\u00a0president Gianni Infantino.\u00a0\u2014 Instagram\/\u00a0gianni_infantino<\/p>\n
Iranian football officials are preparing for talks with FIFA in Zurich regarding arrangements for their upcoming World Cup matches in the United States.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s football federation president, Mehdi Taj, said on Friday that there are \u201cmany issues to discuss\u201d following his return from Canada, where he did not attend FIFA\u2019s annual congress in Vancouver. <\/p>\n
FIFA secretary general Mattias Grafstrom has reportedly invited an Iranian delegation to meet at the organisation\u2019s headquarters before a May 20th deadline.<\/p>\n
The proposed meeting comes just weeks before Iran\u2019s squad is scheduled to arrive in the US, where they will train in Tucson, Arizona, ahead of group matches in California and Seattle. <\/p>\n
Despite ongoing geopolitical tensions following military actions involving the US and Israel earlier this year, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has reiterated that Iran will participate as planned.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump also expressed support for Iran\u2019s involvement, endorsing Infantino\u2019s stance.<\/p>\n
Taj revealed that he and other Iranian officials encountered difficulties when travelling through Toronto en route to Vancouver. <\/p>\n
“In Canada they asked us, ‘Are you members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?’ We told them, ‘In Iran, 90 million of us are IRGC,'” Taj was reported as saying in Iranian media.<\/p>\n
“There was some discussion and he said, ‘It’s up to you,’ and then we decided as a group to go back” to Istanbul, Taj said. “They did not officially deport us, there is nothing labeled as deportation in our file, but in practice it was like that.”<\/p>\n
After being questioned by Canadian authorities and briefly detained, the delegation chose to return to Istanbul, though Taj insisted they were not formally deported.<\/p>\n
Iran are due to face New Zealand, Belgium and Egypt between June 15th and 26th. The tournament, co-hosted by Canada, Mexico and the US, begins on June 11th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An undated picture of\u00a0FIFA\u00a0president Gianni Infantino.\u00a0\u2014 Instagram\/\u00a0gianni_infantino Iranian football officials are preparing for talks with FIFA in Zurich…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12868,29404,10732,3188,14620,13703,51],"class_list":{"0":"post-59057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zurich","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-egypt","10":"tag-fifa","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-world-cup","14":"tag-zurich"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116504805177362825","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}