Antalya
\nIran will head off to their World Cup base this weekend with a spring in their step after beating Mali 2-0 in a friendly in Turkiye on Thursday, even if some uncertainty still clouds their participation in the tournament.
\nGoals from midfielder Saeid Ezatolahi and right back Ramin Rezaeian either side of halftime gave Team Melli a record of three wins and a single loss in their four friendlies this year in the Turkish resort city of Antalya.
\nThe friendlies are the only competitive football the Iran-based players have played since the domestic league was suspended in the wake of US and Israel air strikes on the Islamic Republic in late February that triggered a regional war.
\nThe squad have received visas for Mexico, officials confirmed this week, and will leave Turkiye on Saturday for their tournament base in the border city of Tijuana.
\nMexico\u2019s President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to host the squad after being told that the US authorities did not want Iran staying in their original base in Arizona throughout the June 11 to July 19 tournament.
\nThe squad have not yet received the visas they will need to get into the US to play their group games against New Zealand and Belgium in Los Angeles and Egypt in Seattle.
\nIranian FA (FFIRI) President Mehdi Taj told Iranian media this week that the US visas were the main concern for the federation as Iran\u2019s tournament opener against New Zealand on June 15 approaches.
\nUS Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday there was \u201cno problem\u201d with the Iran squad entering the country, but Washington would not let officials or staff with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) accompany them.
\nBoth the US and Canada, who are co-hosting the World Cup with Mexico, classify the IRGC as a \u201cterrorist entity.\u201d
\nTaj was refused entry into Canada for the FIFA Congress in late April because of his links to the elite military force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Antalya Iran will head off to their World Cup base this weekend with a spring in their step after beating Mali 2-0 in a friendly in Turkiye on Thursday, even if some uncertainty still clouds their participation in the tournament. Goals from midfielder Saeid Ezatolahi and right back Ramin Rezaeian either side of halftime gave …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":98670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98673,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98649\/revisions\/98673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}