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Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said on Monday her government agreed to allow the Iranian national football team to stay in Mexico during the World Cup, adding that the US did not want to host the team.
The team will still play its group stage matches in the US but its base has been moved to Tijuana, Mexico, just south of San Diego, California, a move that Iran’s football federation announced recently and that was formally confirmed by Fifa, the sport’s governing body, on Monday.
Sheinbaum said Fifa approached her government after the US said it did not want Iran’s squad to stay in the country throughout the tournament, despite Iran playing all three of its group matches there.
“The United States doesn’t want the Iranian national team to stay overnight in the United States,” Sheinbaum told reporters. She said a Fifa representative had then asked, “Can they stay overnight in Mexico?”
“And we said, ‘Yes, no problem. We have no issue with that’,” she said.
Moving the training base comes against the backdrop of the war in Iran, which the US and Israel launched on 28 February.
Before the war broke out, the team was originally planned to set up its base in Tucson, Arizona. But with tensions simmering, Iran’s team moved its base to Tijuana in Mexico, Sheinbaum said, confirming an announcement by the Iranian federation over the weekend. The federation said the Iranians had received approval from Fifa, which made the move official on Monday when it released the lists of all 48 base camp sites.
Teams use base camps to train before and after matches. This year’s World Cup runs from 11 June to 19 July and will be co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico.
The possibility of a move had simmered for months in the uncertainty surrounding the crisis in the Middle East and security concerns. US sanctions on Iran were likely to only make the team’s stay in the US more complex.
The US state department said in a statement on Monday that Donald Trump had made it clear the Iranian team was welcome to participate in the tournament.
The department’s statement did not address where the team might stay, or Sheinbaum’s comments.
Sheinbaum said her government was working with Fifa to hash out all the details before the competition.
Mehdi Taj, head of Iran’s football federation, said on Saturday the team’s base would be moved from Arizona to the Mexican border city of Tijuana during the tournament.
Taj added that the move would help avoid visa-related complications and that the squad would be able to travel directly to Mexico aboard Iran Air flights.
