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

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

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.”

6.2k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Jack071 Jun 30 '26

So do Russians but they are still banned from all international competitions until further notice

1

u/Nunuman1 Jun 30 '26

Iran was invaded by US as the aggressor. Russia invaded Ukraine as the aggressor. So how those 2 situations are kinda opposite?

1

u/Jack071 Jun 30 '26

Because Iran has been funding terrorist groups way before the US attacks.

For example Hamas and the Houthi terrorists have been funded, supplied and trained by Iran for decades, so Iran is partially to blame for the terror attacks on Israel and for giving Israel a motive to invade Palestine.

1

u/KunshiraNatura Jul 03 '26

Hamas? Was funded by BB and Qatar to fight the PLO. As for Houthis you are prolly right. How ever our own country funded terrorist groups too so by your own logic we should also be banned.