FootBiz newsletter #158: Iran to decide their World Cup fate, Spurs to go down?

One of the most talked-about rules of the Masters at Augusta is that nobody is allowed their mobile phone on the course.

Which meant that on Tuesday last week, after enjoying the majestic green undulations of America’s most famous course, patrons had the slightly odd experience of returning to their phones keen to discover whether the US president had followed through on his threat to destroy an entire civilization.

Such is the world these days.

Iran still exists, fortunately, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the Iranian Football Federation will need to be the body who makes the decision on their World Cup participation this summer after Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum revealed that FIFA had denied the request to move their games south of the border.

As we had figured out from trying to work out the feasibility of it all for the 150th edition of FootBiz, there was no real way to move Iran’s group games, which are scheduled for Los Angeles (x2) and Seattle.

The only remotely plausible way of getting Iran to play in Mexico would have been to switch Iran and South Korea’s positions, but with so many tickets sold for specific games and the Koreans surely reluctant to throw away all their tournament preparation in exchange for a harder group, FIFA has given up on the process.

“FIFA ultimately decided that the matches cannot be moved from their original venues,” Sheinbaum said at a press conference.

Ultimately the “enormous logistical effort” required to ensure competitive equity, fairness for ticket holders and security for the Iranians was deemed too much, she added.

Now the focus returns to the Iranian federation and what they decide, but also the US government and FIFA, who must navigate Donald Trump’s hardline stance on Iran.

“Gianni’s going to have to do two things,” a North American soccer official told Politico.

“One: Convince Trump that it’s fine for Iran to play. And two: Convince Iran to be comfortable playing in the United States. The other options create a lot of dominos that would fall afterwards.”

While there are several teams which didn’t qualify convincing themselves that there might still be a chance of them featuring at the World Cup this summer, the logistics with just two months until the tournament make it seem incredibly unlikely.

When Iranian officials applied to go to Washington DC for the group stage draw in December, the State Department did not approve all of the delegation’s visa requests, and fears persist over whether players would be granted entry.

Iran is among 12 countries that were affected by Trump’s most expansive ban on foreign visitors, which has since been broadened to affect 19 countries including another World Cup participant, Haiti. While the ban is supposed to not include players and team staff, it would certainly prohibit all spectators traveling from Iran and there is a huge grey area around federation officials and support staff, with visa officials becoming the arbiters of what level of support a football team needs at a major tournament.

FIFA have tried to find solutions behind the scenes and are leaning on Gianni Infantino’s relationship with the American president to try and smooth the operational questions with less than two months until the World Cup. But that relationship has increasingly given the impression of being one-way, and with Trump last week threatening to wipe Iran off the planet, Infantino’s job got more difficult once again.

Table of Contents

• Barca to pre-season in England

• Spurs inch closer to drop

• CONMEBOL back Infantino for re-election 

• La Liga partners on anti-piracy tech

• Boehly escapes action over tickets business

• Historic appointment at Union Berlin

• M&A Murmurs

• Man Utd and Villa to play W7F

• WBA charged with PSR breach

Subscribe to Community level to read the rest.