The Game Turned Late
Adding another layer of complication to an already tangled World Cup build-up, Iran's soccer federation said Tuesday that FIFA has revoked the ticket allocation for fans at the team's three group-stage games in the United States.
Each of the 48 participating federations is entitled to receive 8% of stadium capacity for its matches — several thousand tickets per game. Those allocations typically go on sale to a team's most loyal supporters soon after the December draw, when Iranians had already been subject to a U.S. travel ban for five months.
The scale is the story here; with 48 teams involved, the calendar starts doing some of the reporting.
Now, just days before Iran opens its World Cup campaign on June 15 at the 70,000-seat Los Angeles Rams' stadium in Inglewood against New Zealand, the federation said it can no longer provide any tickets to its supporters.
The claim adds to mounting tensions between Iranian soccer, FIFA and tournament co-host the United States, which launched military attacks on Iran on Feb 28.
"The United States has now taken steps to obstruct the presence of Iranian supporters at the stadiums," the Iranian soccer federation said in a statement reported by semi-official state media. "This incident raises serious questions about the influence of non-sporting and political considerations on the organization of the world's biggest football event."
FIFA said it is "working closely with the IR Iran Football Federation to identify compliant solutions that maximize opportunities for Iranian supporters to attend matches."
FIFA President Gianni Infantino and secretary general Mattias Grafström each promised logistical support in face-to-face meetings with Iranian soccer officials in Turkey in recent weeks.
The Small Details Added Up
Most of Iran's 26-man squad has not played a competitive match since February because they feature for clubs in the domestic league that was shut down by the war. The team is now based in the Mexican border city of Tijuana instead of the pre-war plan to train in Tucson, Arizona. It marks the team's seventh appearance at a men's World Cup.
Some federation officials have also been denied visas to enter the U.S., where Iran also faces Belgium in Inglewood on June 21 and Egypt in Seattle on June 26.
Andrew Giuliani, executive director of the White House FIFA task force, said Tuesday the Iranian team would be able to enter the U.S. the day before their match. He confirmed some Iranian officials were "not coming in" and noted that "as you can imagine, there are some people that claim that they are coaches that may not be coaches."
"The president has been clear... that he wants to make sure they have every opportunity to compete on a level playing field, while also making sure that people directly working with the IRGC have no ability to access the United States," Giuliani said, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Fans wanting to follow the team from the U.S. were likely to face visa and payment difficulties under existing financial sanctions.
"However, in an unexpected move, the allocation granted to Iran's football federation has been withdrawn, and under the current circumstances the federation is unable to offer even a single ticket to national team supporters," the federation said.
If tickets remain revoked, FIFA would have just days to sell approximately 5,600 tickets for the Iran-New Zealand match. The Los Angeles area hosts the largest Iranian community in the United States. Field-level seats were available on FIFA's sales site at $450 each, though in limited quantities.
The Table Looks Different
Infantino stated in 2017 — when U.S. soccer officials were preparing a co-hosting bid they won the following year — that fans must have access to the tournament.
"Any team, including the supporters and officials of that team, who would qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup," Infantino said at the time.
U.S. policy toward World Cup visitors is emerging as a recurring subplot before the tournament begins. A FIFA-appointed match referee from Somalia was denied entry to the U.S. in Miami at the weekend and was cut from the 104-game tournament. An Iraq player was detained for several hours on arriving in Chicago, and a photographer traveling with the delegation was denied entry.
"The disruption is such that one has to ask who is running the World Cup. Is it FIFA or is it the U.S. government with its racially charged immigration policies?" said Piara Powar, executive director of the Fare Network, FIFA's anti-discrimination monitoring partner.
"Before a ball has been kicked, the sense that this World Cup is anything but the celebration of global humanity a World Cup should be is beginning to take over."