TIJUANA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Iran\u2019s soccer team arrived in Mexico on Sunday morning for training ahead of the World Cup, before its first two group matches at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood later this month.<\/p>\n
Ehsan Hajsafi was the first player to exit the plane with markings for German charter airline USC, which arrived at about 5:05 a.m. He led the team, dressed in blue blazers over white T-shirts, through a brief security check with Mexican officials and dogs before boarding a bus.<\/p>\n
The bus stopped briefly at the entrance to the Tijuana airport, where around 20 or so Iran fans waved flags.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s participation in the World Cup, jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada, has been complicated by the Iran war. Problems with processing visas earlier led Iran to move its training base from Tucson to Tijuana. <\/p>\n
The team has been training in the Turkish city of Antalya. It flew directly to Mexico on a private jet from the Mediterranean city\u2019s airport.<\/p>\n
Some members of their entourage were reportedly still without U.S. visas, according to Iranian state television Saturday. Those include the Iranian Football Federation\u2019s secretary-general, Hedayat Mombeini, and its vice president, Mehdi Mohammad Nabi.<\/p>\n
Iran plays its first two games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood against New Zealand on June 15 and Belgium on June 21, then heads to Seattle to face Egypt on June 26. Iran and the U.S. could meet in the Round of 32 on July 3 in Arlington, Texas, if both teams finish second in their groups.<\/p>\n
In March, President Trump discouraged Iran from participating in the tournament, saying he didn\u2019t think it was \u201cappropriate\u201d and raising concerns over players\u2019 \u201clife and safety.\u201d A day later, Iran\u2019s national team countered, saying \u201cno one can exclude\u201d it from playing.<\/p>\n
Iran finalized its team on Monday, including 17 home-based players whose clubs haven\u2019t played since February because of the war. Star forward Sardar Azmoun was dropped in March, reportedly because of a social media post that angered Iranian authorities during the war.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s sports minister said in March that it would \u201cnot be possible\u201d for the team to participate in the World Cup, but the Islamic Republic\u2019s soccer federation said in May that it was moving ahead with a team. The federation had insisted that all players and staff be granted visas, including those who had military service in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TIJUANA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Iran\u2019s soccer team arrived in Mexico on Sunday morning for training ahead of the World Cup, before its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[48288,48290,34,196,2422,1890,2979,48293,43203,48289,48291,6510,48292,1546,48287],"class_list":["post-149603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-first-player","tag-inglewood","tag-iran","tag-iran-war","tag-june","tag-march","tag-mexico","tag-processing-visa","tag-soccer-federation","tag-soccer-team","tag-sofi-stadium","tag-team","tag-tijuana-airport","tag-training","tag-world-cup-match"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116710193374963759","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}