Iran captain Mehdi Taremi has sharply criticised FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino over the management of his country’s World Cup campaign. Even after a third successive draw in the group stage, Iran were left looking to other results to reach the last 32. After the match, Taremi called the World Cup travel and logistics a disaster. After Friday’s match, Taremi and his team-mates were due to fly from Seattle in the United States back to Tijuana in Mexico. The team’s base camp during the tournament was initially to have been in Tucson, Arizona, but in late May they moved it to Mexico because of the ongoing military conflict between the United States and Iran, The Atlantic reports.
The US-Israel-Iran war began on 28 February, when, according to the report, the United States and Israel carried out joint military strikes and killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in response to which Iran launched counter-strikes. The Iran team and its officials repeatedly faced complications in travelling to and from the United States to play matches. Taremi alleged that Infantino had failed to deliver on his promise to improve the situation.
Taremi told reporters: “This is a disastrous World Cup; a complete disaster. FIFA should have solved every problem here. But unfortunately they could not solve a single problem from the start.” He said that after the first match against New Zealand, “Mr Infantino came to our dressing room and said, ‘This is just the beginning…'”
Taremi added: “Our logistics staff are not here. They did not get visas. How is it possible that we have to travel from Tijuana every time? We love the people of Tijuana. We love Mexico. They are very humble people. But as a professional footballer, in a professional competition, playing like this is not right.” He said: “It is not fair. In our view, it is not fair at all. If FIFA finds it fair, that is their business. But not for us. Who actually wants to help us? If they want us to leave the tournament, then fine, we will leave. But it is not fair. We have no recovery specialists, no logistics staff to help us. We always complain about these things, but no one helps us, no one at all.”
In a speech at the World Cup’s opening ceremony in Mexico City, Gianni Infantino said that, if necessary, he would himself have driven a bus to bring the team to the World Cup from the Iranian capital, Tehran. Taremi, who missed a penalty in the first half of the drawn match against Egypt, was asked whether he felt Iran had not been welcomed at the tournament. He replied: “Here we have to fight against everything.” He added: “I don’t know what people actually want. But from our perspective, it seems this is probably what they want. How is it possible to have to return to Tijuana after playing 90 minutes?”
Friday’s draw with Egypt left Iran third in Group G. To reach the last 32, they needed the results of Saturday’s remaining group matches to go in their favour. With DR Congo beating Uzbekistan and Croatia beating Ghana, Iran had to exit the tournament.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report