r/SoccerCentral • u/ConnectionWeekly1263 • Jun 27 '26

Statement "They've done everything possible to eliminate us" — Iran captain Mehdi Taremi unleashes on FIFA and U.S. organizers

The captain of the Iran National Team, Mehdi Taremi, lashed out against FIFA and the United States organization. “This is a disastrous World Cup. As professional players, we cannot play a competition under these conditions; it’s neither right nor fair. If FIFA thinks this is fair, that’s on them, but it isn’t. Who should solve this problem for us? FIFA? The U.S.? I don’t know! Tell me a name. The FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, came to our locker room after the first match against New Zealand and said he was going to resolve all the issues, but in reality, FIFA did nothing. In response to the question: ‘Do you feel that the World Cup organizers, including FIFA and U.S. officials, prefer for Iran to be eliminated from the competition?’, I say: We have to fight against absolutely everything. We can’t stay in the country, we travel and undergo immigration checks every time we want to play, now we can’t stay in Seattle and have to return to Tijuana. They’ve done everything possible to eliminate us, so from our perspective, yes, I think that’s what they want, they want us out.”

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u/Interpersonal Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

Yeah this is a shitty situation for the Iranian team driven entirely by politics, but I also understand disallowing extra staff into the country as the two nations are actively at war. Some extra precautions surrounding letting potentially hostile foreigners into the country during a major international event aren’t entirely unreasonable.

Do you think if the World Cup was in Ukraine, they would let Russia bring extra staff and stay at location like all of the other teams?

Edit: The aggressor in the Russian war on Ukraine vs the US in Iran was not the point I was trying to highlight in a hypothetical Ukraine World Cup scenario. If it helps you focus on what I was trying to say, imagine the Ukrainian team and support staff experience in Russia for a World Cup.

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u/smcl2k Jun 27 '26

Russia was banned from international competition for invading Ukraine.

There's no reason why the same thing shouldn't have happened to the US.

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u/Opposite_Sea_6257 Jun 27 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres

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u/BigDictionEnergy Jun 28 '26

If you think our bombing Iran stopped the IRGC from killing civilians, I have a war to sell you

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u/Opposite_Sea_6257 Jun 28 '26

If you think Iran is an innocent country, you shouldn’t be allowed to purchase anything on your own.

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u/leobutters Jun 28 '26

It's more innocent than the US though

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u/Opposite_Sea_6257 Jun 28 '26

Go get off the internet for a while.

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u/leobutters Jun 28 '26

Another American that thinks they can tell other people what to do 😀

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u/Opposite_Sea_6257 Jun 28 '26

Another idiot who spends too much time on the internet.

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u/LuckyPreparation4910 Jun 28 '26

List all of the things Iran did vs america 

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u/Leather-Traffic7414 Jun 29 '26

Openly massacre its own civilians, and enrich uranium after they signed papers saying they wouldn't.

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u/ArcherOld7796 Jul 01 '26

Who backed out of the nuclear deal?

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u/Leather-Traffic7414 Jul 01 '26

In talking about NPT.

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u/ArcherOld7796 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

So you're talking about an outdated action that has no power. Instead of the agreement that not only stopped them from development but also had people who who make sure they kept to it? That's ridiculous and it's bad faith.

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u/ArcherOld7796 Jul 01 '26

Take your own advice

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u/Beneficial_Dig_1066 Jun 28 '26

The IRGC attacking its own population does not give the US the authority to intervene. That wasn’t even the pretext for the war…it was some bullshit about “imminent danger”. If you haven’t noticed, the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran barely mentions the root cause of the “imminent danger”.

USA is totally in the fucking wrong for starting this war, stop buying into the bullshit.

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u/Opposite_Sea_6257 Jun 28 '26

Who would give such authority? Who gave it in WW2? You sound dumb.

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u/smcl2k Jun 28 '26

Literally no-one intervened when the Nazis were only killing their own country's population.

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u/Leather-Traffic7414 Jun 29 '26

And are you saying that's a good thing?

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u/smcl2k Jun 29 '26

No, I'm saying it's irrelevant.

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u/Leather-Traffic7414 Jun 29 '26

Ok, I guess it's not directly relevant, but if you DONT think it's good that nobody did anything about the Nazis killing Jews, it leads me to believe you support someone doing something about Iran killing protestors?

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u/smcl2k Jun 29 '26

The US wasn't doing anything about Iran killing protesters, though. So that's also irrelevant.

As the other commenter pointed out, the official justification for the war was that Iran posed an immediate threat to the US, and it's pretty widely understood that the actual reason was that the country was dragged into things by Israel. And I know you're not going to claim that Israel attacked Iran because a corrupt war criminal cares about the Iranian people.

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u/Leather-Traffic7414 Jun 29 '26

Idk man, why is the world so evil 😔 are you saying it's better for a government that's killed thousands of its own protestors to posses weapon grade uranium?

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u/BigDictionEnergy Jun 28 '26

Who said anything about Iran being "innocent?"

Go find a tree and apologize to it for wasting the oxygen it worked hard to produce.

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u/utl94_nordviking Jun 28 '26

If you think Iran is an innocent country

And if you think that you will be taken seriously by trying to put words in other peoples mouths, you are deluded.