{"id":244437,"date":"2026-03-17T14:24:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T10:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/?p=244437"},"modified":"2026-03-17T14:37:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T10:37:02","slug":"iran-negotiating-with-fifa-to-move-its-world-cup-matches-from-us-to-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/news\/244437\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran negotiating with FIFA to move its World Cup matches from US to Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body><p>Iran&rsquo;s football federation is in discussions with FIFA about moving &#8203;their World Cup matches to Mexico from the United States due to concerns about the safety of their players, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/sports\/soccer\/iran-negotiating-with-fifa-move-world-cup-games-mexico-us-iran-federation-chief-2026-03-17\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reuters<\/a> writes, citing Iranian football &zwnj;president Mehdi Taj said on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Iran&rsquo;s participation in the global soccer showpiece was thrown into doubt after co-hosts the United States launched joint air strikes at the country along with Israel.<\/p>\n<p>US President Donald Trump said last week that Iran was welcome to participate but suggested it might not be appropriate for &#8203;them to play in the US &ldquo;for their own life and safety&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;When Trump has explicitly stated that he cannot ensure &#8203;the security of the Iranian national team, we will certainly not travel to America,&rdquo; said Taj.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We are negotiating with FIFA to hold Iran&rsquo;s World Cup matches in Mexico.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Soccer&rsquo;s &#8203;global governing body FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iran&rsquo;s football federation is in discussions with FIFA about moving &#8203;their World Cup matches to Mexico from the United States due to concerns about the safety of their players, Reuters writes, citing Iranian football &zwnj;president Mehdi Taj said on Monday. Iran&rsquo;s participation in the global soccer showpiece was thrown into doubt after co-hosts the United [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":244419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,35,43,96,98,47,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-world","category-iran-en","category-other-en","category-society","category-sport"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":244441,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244437\/revisions\/244441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}