FIFA at odds to explain visa delays for Iran team, selected media

When FIFA president Gianni Infantino honoured US President Donald Trump with the association's inaugural peace award during the football World Cup 2026 draw, many saw it as an act of bending backwards to please the latter. The world governing body of the ‘beautiful game’, which often prides itself on not letting politics interfere with its governance, will now be at odds to explain the fiasco over visas to Iran — a nation with which the US and Israel are locked in war — members of the Iraqi team, as well as several journalists from selected African nations.

The angst in the Iran camp, which had earlier appealed to FIFA in vain to relocate its three group league matches to Mexico, is understandable. The first of its Group G matches is against New Zealand on 15 June in Los Angeles — but the team set foot in Mexico only on Sunday, 7 June giving it less than less than a week to acclimatise.

Iranian coach Amir Ghalenoei complained on arrival at Tijuana airport: “We should have been here last week because a 12-hour time difference needs two weeks of adjusting. Usually in these tournaments, before technical matters, ethical and human considerations must be respected, which I think for us was not the case.’’

Having departed their training camp in Turkey a day earlier, the Iranian team landed in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. The squad will be based in Tijuana throughout the tournament despite playing all three of its group-stage games in the US as under its visa conditions, the team must enter and leave US soil on the same day as the matches. “We can enter in the morning and we must leave the same day,” Iran’s envoy Abolfazl Pasandideh told reporters. This version, however, appeared to contradict what team spokesman Amir Mahdi Alavi told Iranian state television earlier.

“The visas issued for the national team are multiple-entry visas and the national team will arrive at the match venue one day before the first game and, for the following games, two days prior to each match,” Alavi said.

FIFA rules for World Cups stipulate that a team’s coach must address a news conference on the eve of a match at the venue where the game will be played.

Iran’s captain Ehsan Hajsafi wanted to convey his grievance to FIFA about the delay in getting US visas. “Why so late?” he asked. “In the last year, we experienced two imposed wars in our country and felt that the team is 100 per cent ready and capable of advancing from the group stage."

The three Iran games are on 15 June (vs NZ), 21 June (Belgium) in Los Angeles and 26 June (Egypt) in Seattle.

US mistrust in hosting Iran is clear from the fact that several of the support staff and Mehdi Taj, president of Iran's football association, were reportedly among those denied visas. “It’s political interference in sport in its worst form,” said Taj, whose background as a former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is being seen as a deterrent.  

Meanwhile, two members of the Iraqi team were subjected to “additional inspection”, which saw striker Aymen Hussein being allowed entry into the US after being questioned for about seven hours.

In a separate development, the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) dashed off a letter to FIFA last week, complaining about denial of visas to several Iranian and African media persons. 'We find ourselves facing a long-standing and unacceptable problem for us journalists: the denial of entry visas to regularly accredited colleagues,' association president Gianni Merlo wrote in a mail to Bryan Swanson, FIFA’s director of media relations and Jochen Steinhoff, head of media operations and services.

'There are many cases: Iranian colleagues, African colleagues, some of whom have been given single entries — so if their team goes to play in Canada or Mexico and they follow it, they can no longer return to the States. The cases are countless and, I repeat, unacceptable. Politicians always say that sport unites and builds bridges between young people in countries in conflict but in this case, we are going in the opposite direction.

'I hope FIFA can do everything possible to secure visas. We’re already significantly behind schedule, and many colleagues have already lost the opportunity to use plane tickets booked on time and they’ll also face significant additional expenses,' the letter added.