Iran was welcome to participate<\/a> in the World Cup but he believed it was not appropriate that they be there \u201cfor their own life and safety\u201d.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s a very emotional moment. \u2060Everybody\u2019s saying a lot of things,\u201d AFC \u2060General Secretary Windsor John told reporters on Monday in Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s the federation who should decide if they\u2019re playing, and as \u2060of today, the federation has told us that they are going to the World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey \u2060are our member. We want them \u2060to play. You know, they qualified, \u2026 so we hope that they will solve their issues, whatever it is, and be able to participate.\u201d<\/p>\n
An official withdrawal \u200cby Iran from football\u2019s global showpiece would be the first in the modern era and would leave FIFA with the urgent \u200ctask \u200cof finding a replacement.<\/p>\n
It is unclear whether FIFA would have time to replace Iran should they decide to withdraw from the 2026 tournament. One option could be choosing the highest ranked team in Asia that did not make it into the tournament.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Group G could also play out with special rules with three teams instead of four.<\/p>\n
The tournament runs until July 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asian Football Confederation says it hasn\u2019t received any notification of Iran pulling out of upcoming World Cup. Listen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[2714,34,49,42,1023,73,3222],"class_list":["post-21628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-football","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran","tag-world-cup-2026"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116238762828565220","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21628","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=21628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a><\/p>\n