"We hope Mr Infantino will indeed implement the words and promises he made to the Iran national team." That's not a protest chant outside FIFA headquarters — that's Mahdi Mohammad Nabi, Iran's World Cup team supervisor, speaking to Reuters from a Marriott Hotel in Tijuana, where Iran have been forced to relocate their training camp after visa denials blocked their original base in Arizona.
Fifteen members of the Iranian football federation have been refused entry to the United States for the World Cup. Nabi, a veteran of both the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, says he has never experienced anything like it. "Such lack of coordination" — his words — has disrupted the team's preparation for a tournament they qualified for fair and square.
FIFA shrugs, the US digs in
Infantino spent Wednesday at a press conference in Mexico City essentially celebrating himself for getting Iran to the tournament at all, while waving off the visa chaos with a breezy "maybe it's good to just chill, relax." The following day, Iran's team supervisor was standing outside a hotel in Tijuana saying the promises weren't being kept. That gap tells you everything about how this World Cup is being run.
The US State Department's position is blunt: the visas were rejected because it "will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the U.S. under false pretenses." When asked about that allegation directly, Nabi declined. "We are here to talk about sports."
Iran's players did eventually receive their visas, ten days before Monday's opener against New Zealand near Los Angeles. But the staff situation remains unresolved, and player Saeid Ezzatollahi confirmed what that costs: "We need all of our staff and especially our main guys that can help us through this tournament."
A competition already tilted
Iran enter their group stage opener against New Zealand at a measurable disadvantage. Disrupted training base, skeleton support staff, and a backdrop of an active conflict between Iran and the United States — this is the first World Cup since 1930 where a host nation is fielding a team it is technically at war with. A fragile ceasefire agreed in April has not settled things, with strikes continuing between the two countries.
The situation also raises legitimate questions about Iran's odds in what is already a demanding group. A team robbed of its full support infrastructure, forced to relocate at short notice, and dealing with the psychological weight of what Ezzatollahi described as a war that "has taken a heavy toll on the players" is not operating on a level playing field. Any market pricing Iran purely on footballing ability is missing a significant non-football variable.
Russia, for comparison, opened its borders with a visa-free system for the 2018 tournament. The 2026 hosts have denied entry to federation staff, African and Iranian journalists, a Somalian FIFA referee with a valid visa, and implemented bond conditions on nations with high overstay rates. This is the organisational context of the largest World Cup ever staged.
"The FIFA regulations and protocols must be properly followed by both member federations and hosts," said Nabi. So far, one side of that equation is doing most of the following.
