TIJUANA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0About 150 miles from SoFi Stadium, south of the Mexican border, sits the hotel housing Iran\u2019s World Cup team for its games at the Inglewood venue. <\/p>\n
The entrance to the Marriott in Tijuana is barricaded, flanked by police and members of the Mexican National Guard, guns held close. No one enters without a hotel reservation or special pass. <\/p>\n
Despite the tensions and challenges surrounding Iran\u2019s participation in the World Cup, early Saturday morning finds the mood inside the four-star hotel relaxed, even jubilant. Several dozen fans mingle and bond over their shared excitement to see the squad\u2019s players before they depart for their second group-stage match at SoFi. <\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to come down to support Iranian soccer, and cheer for them when they exited the building and make them happy,\u201d says Lucas Zarrabi, 13. The teen, who attended Monday\u2019s 2-2 draw with New Zealand and has a ticket for Sunday\u2019s match against Belgium, is one of several fans from Los Angeles who made the drive to stay with the team. Others flew in from San Jos\u00e9 and even Miami, turning up at the hotel not quite four miles from the U.S. border crossing. <\/p>\n
Showing up is important, some said, because of what they describe as unfair conditions imposed on the team. After the outbreak of war, the Iranian team was forced to move its base camp from Tucson to Tijuana. Eleven team officials and staff members did not receive U.S. visas. The Trump administration has also denied Iran\u2019s requests to arrive two days before matches \u2014 and mandated that the team must leave immediately after each game.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery little technicality is making it difficult for the team,\u201d says Abbas Eftekhari, 65, who was born in Iran and has lived in the U.S. for more than 40 years. \u201cI think this is going to drain them psychologically and also physically.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s soccer federation has been vocal about the obstacles, saying it would lodge a complaint with FIFA. <\/p>\n
\u201cFootball shouldn\u2019t lose its power to politics,\u201d Hedayat Mombeini, secretary-general of the Iran Football Federation, said Friday. He added that the restrictions \u201care certainly having a negative effect on us, but we are trying to overcome these problems with our Iranian pride.\u201d <\/p>\n
Since the team landed on June 7, Ali Eslami has visited the hotel gates nearly every day. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the best pleasure for me. I wished them the best luck. I told them it\u2019s hard but they\u2019re doing excellent things,\u201d said Eslami, who splits his time between Southern California and Tijuana.<\/p>\n
He was there again Friday, waiting for the players to return from afternoon training blocks away at the Estadio Caliente, home to the Liga MX\u2019s Xolos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been in America for 50 years \u2014 this has been the most emotional thing, to see the team that I have not seen in 50 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some Iran fans fear reprisal from fellow members of the diaspora for supporting the team, insisting they were in Tijuana for the love of soccer and the players, not politics. Eftekhari worries that the mood at Iran\u2019s first match, where fans and protesters clashed, affected the players.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as they see that their countrymen have slogans against them, it also has a negative psychological effect on them. But, that\u2019s how things are at this time,\u201d Eftekhari says.<\/p>\n
Just over 24 hours until Sunday\u2019s noon kickoff, it\u2019s not just Iranian fans contributing to the atmosphere. A group of flight attendants from China staying at the hotel embrace the excitement, donning jester hats and waving scarves colored red, white and green. And soccer fans from Tijuana are eager to show some local hospitality. Iran has diplomatic ties with Mexico, unlike with the U.S., and sought to move its group-stage matches to the country where it has an embassy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love the Mexican people very much, and for us, the best situation is for our games to be held in Mexico,\u201d Abolfazl Pasandideh, the Iranian ambassador to Mexico, said at the time.<\/p>\n
Leonardo Ramirez Lopez, a 10-year-old soccer fanatic from Tijuana, clutches his autograph album in hopes he\u2019ll get new signatures. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a new team that I don\u2019t have experience with how they play,\u201d he says. But Iran is already his third-favorite team, behind Colombia and Argentina. <\/p>\n
After more than two hours of waiting, several dozen fans break into cheers as players finally file through the lobby. The squad smiles and waves, stopping for a few autographs. As each player leaves, he kisses a Quran, pressing his forehead against it before boarding the bus to Tijuana\u2019s airport. <\/p>\n
\u201cIran, Iran! Whoop, whoop!\u201d fans cry, breaking into song.<\/p>\n
Angueira writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TIJUANA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0About 150 miles from SoFi Stadium, south of the Mexican border, sits the hotel housing Iran\u2019s World Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[1535,48956,20057,4511,34,51246,2979,44869,52581,6510,43204,2259,20893,52580,878],"class_list":["post-169918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-cheer","tag-fan","tag-game","tag-hotel","tag-iran","tag-match","tag-mexico","tag-player","tag-several-dozen-fan","tag-team","tag-tijuana","tag-time","tag-u-s-visa","tag-world-cup-hotel","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116785757694701343","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169918","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=169918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}