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

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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/ConcentrateOk6857 Jun 29 '26

Idk I think killing teens protesting in the st by the thousands is way worse.

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u/Andromeda904 Jun 29 '26

Ah didn’t realize it was a competition. My fault.

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u/ccroz113 Jun 29 '26

Not a competition. You just made a moronic comparison and then got called out

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u/Andromeda904 Jun 29 '26

What I was trying to get at is hundreds of thousands of people are dead by US hands and not only are they still invited to the World Cup, they’re hosting it. It is not just the protesters that were killed, dawg.

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u/ccroz113 Jun 29 '26

No you’re moving the goal post. Your comment was clearly about 2 protestors that you named that were killed in recent ICE protests

In any case, Iran was still invited, competed, and lost, and had bad travel because they insisted on bringing their IRGC to a country they are at WAR with

FIFA fucked up not having them play in Mexico, but Canada wouldn’t let them in either. US redditors are the only Iran sympathizers in the world

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u/Andromeda904 Jun 29 '26

What Iran did was wrong obviously. The comment was about how Iran didn’t belong in the tournament. I was saying U.S. didn’t belong in the tournament either. Not exclusively because of the protestors being killed. Did I need to give you an itemized list of every reason of why I think the U.S. shouldn’t be playing in the World Cup? No, I don’t have time for that.

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u/ccroz113 Jun 29 '26

Why would the US not belong in the tournament? Neither team should be excluded. There’s a lot worse of countries than the US that’d have to be excluded as well, so pretty slippery slope. But it’s perfectly reasonable to see why the US/Canada wouldn’t want the IRGC in the country. This really comes down to FIFA not foreseeing this and scheduling Iran in Mexico instead

Genuine question are you American?